Love letters from Hell
by aurochsandangels
Summary: In 1996 a collection of papers is unearthed,revealing the true story of Erik and Christine,in their own words.Leroux faithful,Short novel length.EC based.M for later chaps.100 percent cat free!
1. Default Chapter

I have slightly changed the format to a staggered timeline. This makes it more interesting,and evenly distributes the "Good parts" throughout the story. So maybe somebody accidentally dropped the pages,and when they picked them back up,viola!

LOVE LETTERS FROM HELL

These items were found in 1996,during the extensive renovation of the Paris conservatory on the Rue de madrid. Workers laying a new foundation discovered them under six feet of dirt and concrete,in a previously unexplored corner of the basement. There is no way of knowing exactly how long they have been there,or who could have put them there. The documents have no connection to anyone currently living in the area. They have been handed over to the archeology department at the university of Paris. The items are as follows;

One carved ebony box inlaid with silver blue pearl,approximately 18x12x6 inches,with a central image of Melpomene,flanked by Terpsichore and Calliope. Inscription across front panel reads"De la cote noire de granite-1870"The box contains three large envelopes. The first,the oldest,is in extremely poor condition. It is yellowed,cracked,and has some staining from mold. Its original seal,a deaths head,appears to be intact. On the back the name "Christine"Is barely visible in reddish brown ink. This a in a masculine script. The second envelope is also in poor condition,though there is no staining,and the rose tint of the paper is still visible. This also has its original seal of plain wax,with the initials "CRD." On the back is the name"Erik." This is in a finer handwriting. The third envelope is sealed with glue,it is brittle,but in otherwise good condition,its original color of pale green, unfaded. The name "Claudia"is printed on the back in black ink.

Upon being opened,each envelope was found to contain a sheaf of papers,a volume of letters,or a journal. In the envelope marked "Christine"Were also a lace handkerchief,with the monogram"CRD" and a white satin ribbon,approximately fourteen inches long. In the envelope marked"Erik"there were the dessicated remains of a white rose,a lock of dark hair,and a black satin glove .In the envelope marked "Claudia"There were several pencil sketches,one of a tall,striking man,several children,one a boy in a wheelchair,and a frail,dark haired woman.

The text of these testimonials are recorded here in Their original form,nothing has been omitted or censored.

FROM THE ENVELOPE MARKED"CHRISTINE"

September 1881

_"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.".._My Parvana! With only days left I will attempt to write this, our history. I have destroyed everything!The house,the organ,all of my music. The only remaining evidence of my existence lies with my friend the Daroga. But I cannot destroy you,and I cannot sleep without you,so I pen this last and most personal testimony to accompany me into the darkness. I am aware of the rumors already growing concerning Miss _Daae_,and myself. Gossip,Ghost stories. Who knows what time will make of it.It no longer concerns me,with one exception. These extraordinary circumstances may have created their own characters,but time will keep _these_ truths in her memory..Our spirits lived and drew breath through each other,and in her eyes I was not an angel,or a demon or a ghost,I was Erik.

In the winter of 1866,when I was twenty three,and seven years before my work on the opera house was finished,I met the only human being I have ever considered more beleaguered than myself. Stranger still was that this hapless wanderer of the earth was my deliverance,and may well have saved my wretched soul without ever knowing it.

I was at the bleak end of an extended time away from my post, in Paris overseeing my companies work on the cellars of the opera house under Monsieur Garnier. I had never met the gentleman personally,and such a meeting was never wanted,or required. This was fortunate,as it would have presented the question of my age,and my despicable affliction before my credentials. I knew more about Monsieur Garnier than he would ever know of me. I admired him,albeit,rather darkly. He was the mirror of all I would have been had I not been born a monster. We traveled nearly identical paths,mastering the world while still very young,except that his path was strewn with medals, accolades,and admiration,and mine was littered with death and destruction. I was an artist of the unspeakable,of the evanescent realms of the soul,Monsieur Garnier had his eyes on the grand golden world of man,and he went from thought,to paper,to marble and glass taking note of little in between.

Sub contractors,masons,and designers of architecture and function are an odd species enough alone,but drawn together on such a massive project,especially one which is simply born for the sake of art itself,they evolve into a single omnipotent mind. The goal of this mind is to always know,always calculate suspiciously,what its own components are up to, like a monster swallowing its own tail.

Usually,I was left in peace,unnoticed,unquestioned,since my ideas and my execution were flawless,and the rest I did in secret. I was not part of the mind. I lived quietly in its outer darkness,affecting moods and changing tides with a wave of my hand. I always came and went as I pleased,and thought of the grand silent skeleton as my home. Since the time I could remember dreams,I had dreamed of a golden palace of music,as vast as the gardens of heaven,now here It was,taking shape from the dank featureless earth. The work gave me life,but suffering as I did,I would often disappear,my absences of a month or two going unremarked. Early on,I had been elevated to the foreman of my company, this afforded me great freedom,and I always left meticulous instructions on any work to be done,or possible changes Nothing cherished lasts indefinitely. As the years went by,and interchanging groups of artists,idealistic fools. ambitious schemers and treacherous entrepreneurs banded and disbanded,to carry out Monsieur Garniers work with me,and add their own,I found _myself_ gaining a startling reputation. Here,I was a ghost,here a guardian spirit,here an ogre from the lake,here an escaped lunatic!..

Alas,though it was amusing for a while,I finally discovered the peril of being a living legend.

A certain over imaginative crowd decided one year,to form a small society dedicated solely to celebrating,or more accurately,exposing the mystery of the secret mason,or whatever they were calling me then. These were the same progressive clowns who spent their free time thumping tables,calling oaths out to inanimate objects,and diligently powdering the floors of darkened parlours and inspecting them for spectral shoe prints. Their following grew exponentially with every grieving widow,and every daring feat of quackery.

In those days,I still kept a flat near the Rue Madeleine,but I rarely went there. One late night,well after everyone had gone home,or should have,I was accosted. traversing the building,I had paused in the grand foyer,as I often did,to watch the moon through the bare rafters of the ceiling. I forgot myself and didn't hear the men come up behind me. There were two of them,landscapers by trade,who had no business being in the building at any time,much less in the middle of the night.

I ran,and they pursued me,mercilessly. I could have gone home,and lost them effortlessly in the streets,but I loved a good game,especially if I had the advantage. I led them down into the skeletal labyrinth of the stage,the flytowers, and the cellars. I knew my way around even in the pitch black. I didn't need my eyes. My body knew every pitfall,loose beam,and unfinished column.

To my surprise,they kept up with me,shouting strange epithets,from which I could only conclude,my current incarnation was"Black ghost".

We got as far as the third cellar,and I believe they would have chased me into disaster,caught me by the cloak and forced some ridiculous confrontation,If just then something quite unexpected hadn't happened. Right before the disbelieving eyes of his comrade,the other man disappeared through a hole the floor. Later,this mysterious opening proved be non existent. No matter how the authorities scoured the memory of the first man,and the cellar. He had simply dematerialized through the floorboards and ended up in the basement with his neck broken.

There was a huge commotion,with the mans family accusing his acquaintances of unleashing evil spirits onto their heads,and of the opera house willfully harboring them,and the police feeling over every inch of the cellar with white gloves and magnifying glasses,to no avail. But still,there was always the question of who they had been chasing. I did not want to risk another such scene.

In those days,I had very few incriminating possessions. I kept some things stored by the lake under the opera,just because I spent so much time there. My books,my music,drawings,and my drafts of the cellars. Except for the drafts,these would have meant little if discovered.

I took these,relinquished my flat,and disappeared for nearly a year.

As for my trip,it has faded almost entirely from my memory!I have a single thought now,to which all memories are connected,and every inspiration,and every regret,and echoes of all that I have ever been invariably take that form,dancing in an endless procession to where my dark sleep awaits me.

I'd first gone to London,where for two months I haunted the moldy streets like some masked hoodlum Then to Egypt,and the jungles of Africa. During the summer and early autumn,I traveled with a caravan from Andalucia to San Sebastian,and then instead of going back,spent another six weeks in the bay of Biscay,visiting the small islands along the coast. My path wasn't random. I was searching for something specific,and I still believed,though it had so far eluded me through the entire world,and proved to be nothing more than a fable over and over,that I would yet find it. I never did,of course. In poor compensation,I did make other valuable and sundry acquisitions. Enough to put to rest effectively,the curiosity of any future associates,if need be.

It was early evening,and I had just began the trip back to Paris, hiring a coach and driver from Rosporden. It had been snowing for days,but now the sky was clear and quiet,and everything as far as the eye could see,was a lurid purple beneath the dead twilight sun. We had just passed Rennes,and were on a deserted road nearing Cesson. In the mirage of bruised shadows ahead of us,I saw a bent,dark figure laboring through the drifts. He appeared to be reaching the end of his strength,and was foolishly using the last of it to transport some cumbersome package,half slung over his trembling shoulder. I secretly wished him joy of his stupidity and hoped whatever the contents of the package was,It would give him eternal amusement in his coffin.

As we passed,my callousness abruptly gave way to shame,when I saw that the bundle possessed a pair of tiny feet,dangling in damp white slippers,and blue to the ankles. I ordered my driver to stop,and signal the man forward. He did so,but the man simply stood there,motionless,staring ahead with a look of fearful amazement transforming his frozen features. Perhaps he fancied that my tall black coach,with its lean horses and unlit iron lamps,was death itself come to convey him away into the hungry abyss of the coming night. In any other circumstance,my role as grim reaper would have amused me,but I was not heartless.

My driver dismounted,approaching the petrified man,who instinctively clutched his burden closer,his widening eyes at last lending animation to his stiff face. Even as they stood there shaking with cold,he would not come forward. They engaged in some terse conversation,which even with my acute hearing,I could not make out over the wind,it was punctuated with emphatic gesturing on both their parts,toward the sky,the woods and the bundle. At last,after a round of furtive glances directed at the coach,and a gust of wind that nearly took them both away,the man followed my driver forward.

He was not as frail as he had appeared,stumbling along the roadside. In the warmth of the cab he unfolded to his full height,revealing a rather square, but naturally regal posture. He was not far past my own age,for he recovered almost immediately from his ordeal,as only the young can.

Still guarding the bundle with one hand,he greeted me with the other. Gloveless and blue,cold as frozen iron. I was glad for my own gloves,that he could not feel the same dead iciness in mine,which hadn't the excuse of the elements. He introduced himself only as Roland,and explained how they had become lost on the road to Lannion with the eventual destination of Perros on the coast Lannion! I thought perhaps I had misheard him,as this was nearly fifty miles away. He might be a complete lunatic,or an escaped convict,but at least he deserved applause for blind audacity.

Though my horses and driver were already tired,I agreed to take them the entire way,if there would be someone to take them in when we arrived. He thanked me,and assured me that they had family in Perros,who would welcome them at any time.

I was to learn,much later,that this broken half dead vagrant was the celebrated musician Roland Daae,who had vanished from Uppsala the year before,and that this was not a rare circumstance,but his perpetual state of existence.

After settling awkwardly into the opposite bench,and again thanking me profusely,he reluctantly transferred his parcel from the prison of his arm,to the shelter of it. Instantly it came to life,pushing the bulky greatcoat away to reveal a little girl,of not more than six or seven.

She was,without any particular excuse,except perhaps her eyesThe most beautiful child I had ever seen,out of a world of children. None of them surpassed her pale charm .Duchesses,princesses,the dark eyed sultanas. Even the tragic little courtesans with their skillfully painted faces,peering out from the duennas fat shadow with such a chemistry of pathos,longing and mischief,could not have duplicated the magic in her placid expression.. but I'm getting confused again,reconciling my Christine with that long ago child.

Out of the darkness, another came unbidden. My sister Janthe,of the same age,gone in a conflagration. A disaster placed squarely on my back. Gone,before I had even reached the age of reason which would have allowed me the precious lucidity to commit her wholly to memory. Here is her laughter,her high color,her amber eyes. Loose elements which can never be put into a solid form,leaving nothing for me to revisit. This rude memory and the present beauty, combined to beat me with a horrible excess of emotion,so I had to turn my head quickly away from the vignette toward any distraction. Inevitably,it was those two small feet in their curiously inappropriate attire.

"Why doesn't the child have proper shoes?"I asked probably sounding harsher than I meant to. Roland didn't answer me directly,but launched into a most harrowing tale.

He said they had come recently from Skotelof,in the north,to Paris,where he had hoped to find work,as he was an artist. But all prospects dried up and they ran low on money. With no real benefactors,they were forced to sell off much of their valuables,most of which had more sentimental value than monetary. They had relatives who had recently settled in Bretagne,so they made up their minds to take the long trip and put Paris far behind them. Though he was loathe to make himself a burden,he had the child to think about.

There was a fair in Le Mans,on the way which boasted of a magnificent carousel,sporting a complete menagerie of fantastic creatures,and the little girl had pleaded to see it. So they waylaid their trip and got off the train to spend the day.

The fair proved to be no more than an unscrupulous sideshow. The world famous carousel had degenerated into a caravan of sickly,bedraggled ungulates,and one ostrich,slogging around in a dejected circle to the tune of a whip smacking the dirt. The entertainment,and its retinue,was a shady collection of drunks,aging contortionists,and the grossly unfortunate.Oh how well I knew these migrating phantasms of the damned!The child was terrified,of the chained animals,of the shouts and the hands reaching out to touch her hair,and above all,of the white faced clowns,their naked,corpse white faces hiding even more terrible secrets behind the greasepaint. When she cried to get away,Roland did not scold.

On the journey back to the train station,they were attacked and robbed by someone who had followed them by way of the woods,from the fair. They took anything which appeared to have value,including the train tickets and a gold locket with the only picture of Rolands wife,and the girls mother .But they were spared their lives,and left otherwise unmolested. They sat down on a log together and cried,but it was little consolation,and after an hour they started walking again,hoping to find a ride before nightfall.

They walked until the sun,climbing as high as it could in the cold sky,began slipping wearily toward the horizon. The child complained that her boots were wearing holes in her stockings,and her toes were blistered and sore. This is when Roland retrieved her soft satin slippers,her "dancing shoes"from their knapsack,and put them on her feet. From then on ,he carried her as much as his strength allowed,but no carriage or horse ever passed them on the lonely road.

Eventually,they had to take a detour into the woods to find a stream or a pool for a drink of fresh water,and to fill their cantine,but the search was fruitless,and darkness was rapidly descending. The forest was thick and black,and the huge shadows looming around them scared the little girl. The landscape was already alive with a cacophony of strange sounds,when something distinguished itself from the din,and began moving stealthily in their direction. Suddenly,unbelievably,they knew they were being followed again. Something was coming through the darkness toward them,huge and swift. They turned and ran in blind terror,with the unknown pursuing them,for an incalculable distance. They were forced to drop all the rest of their meager belongings,including the child's boots.

It seemed they had been running for hours,with the monstrous thing at a constant galloping gait just yards behind,until they were hopelessly lost in the woods,with no choice but to meet their fate,and pray for mercy. At last,by way of miracle or magic,they spilled out onto the road again,and their tormentor retreated,as if the edge of the forest was as far as its powers allowed it. Roland swore that whatever it was,it seemed to take flight at the last moment,on unimaginably huge wings. Soon after,they saw my carriage pass.

Had I been anyone else,I would have silently dismissed his tale as the ravings of a man delerious with hunger and fatigue,whose pursuer was nothing more than wild boar or an overly maternal deer. But I know well there are things in these woods never meant to be seen by living waking eyes.

In the long silence that followed,with Roland reflecting on the retreating horrors of the afternoon,and I anticipating the emptiness of the coming night,after my companions reached Perros,and home,it came to me that I had not even introduced myself. As a rule,I avoided it,it was better that no one knew my name. All the easier to forget my person. But I was warmed by this stranger,by his unfettered trust. Neither of us would have been judged sane by our peers,and the fact that we had come together through the agent of exile,made it imparative that I trust him equally.

He had quite naturally disregarded my odd appearance. I wore a cloak with the hoodI _must_ have looked like death personified! pulled far over my head,but even in the obscurity of the cab,my black mask had to be obvious,either that,or I had the seeming of a faceless ghoul."I apologize my friend"I said,offering him again my bony hand."I neglected to introduce myself,and I just let you go on. I am Erik.""Erik"he repeated,a glorious smile on his cracked lips. He took my hand,and looked directly into the abyss of my face without a flinch,or a shadow of doubt crossing his forehead. No one had ever been so cool. Was he perhaps,half blind? He gestured toward his daughter by means of a light embrace,a proud glance"And this,friend Erik,is my child, Christine...She is all I have left of her poor mother.. He trailed off into a slough of melancholy I was wise not to follow him into. I repeated in a whisper,audible only to myself"Christine"

The intrepid Roland may have passed me off with a glance,But Christine was not so indifferent. She hadn't spoken a word since entering the carriage. Not even given in to the temptation to interrupt her fathers story,with embellishments and corrections,as children are wont to do. She gazed at me with a most undefinable,unperturbed expression. What was it? desolute,reproachful,wise?She fixed on the darker shadows of my face,my eyes! with her own eyes,and what eyes they were! They were most certainly a pure,deep blue,but in this elgin half light,where there was neither sun or moon,they shone pale silver,like starlit water. Luminous and sounding. I had the disconcerting sensation even as they looked at me,that I should not be looking into them.

I offered them the provisions I carried with me on such trips. Hard bread and various dried and immortal sundries,which kept me alive but I doubted had the power to otherwise interest even a man dying of starvation. To Roland,I presented the small greenish flask of absinthe I always kept with me then.

This was not the semi toxic elixir of the masses. This was an anodyne I distilled myself. I learned the art from the tzigane,who know how to unlock the alchemic secrets of all growing things. My method was not the common trick of infusing nymphs and nightmares,but the sorcery of conjuring into life,things which only walked in dreams. I amused myself over several winters refining this recipe,learning to cheat morpheous in his own realm, drawing out the most exquisite spirits to commune with me in my singular darkness.

Roland took the flask,and before he realized what it was had taken a deep drink,and was temporarily speechless."Absinthe!"he laughed,when he had regained his composure."I did not recognize it,it was so sweet,like violets!..now I suppose I'm lost.""Not lost"I assured him"You see,it's not poison"I took a drink,and then another for prosperity,and unguarded,let my head fall back for a moment,as if heaven could stand to look at me just once. I gave Christine the little flask to play with,for she seemed intrigued by it. She held it up high so its crystal facets caught the stars in a pale green dance of broken light all around our heads.

We passed the remainder of the journey in silence. Roland at last gave in to exhaustion and was sleeping with his head bent to his chest. Christine amused herself with the gloomy landscape flying by the window .The armies of skeletal tress,the distant,phosphorescent mountaintops,the ghostly clouds and the sleepy houses,few and far between,with soft lights flickering in their upper casements.

I have always had mental difficulty with traveling over great distances in the dark. At some point I inevitably loose myself,my bearings,my sense of up or down,here or there. I feel I've been swallowed by oblivion and will never find my way out. I was just sensing it now,confined in this small space with the night spinning by unbroken,and I expected the full fury of it any moment. Then the darkness presented me with something entirely new,and my anticipated terror was forever forgotten.

As I idly observed this mute,lovely child following the moon with her mirrored eyes,I had an overwhelming desire to hear her speak. Only one word or two,to form and float in this solemn space with us as we clattered through the dark. As if in answer to this,she began to sing. So softly,as to barely be heard above the staccato of the wheels and the keening of the wind.

It began as a broken tune,random rhyming syllables and consonants,and coalesced into a liquid chanson floating just above the din of the night. We were enchanted. She was only singing of the things she saw passing;clouds and stars,night birds,sleeping villages and haunted woods. These things,yet too,of all things passing.

Oh her voice,her young voice!How can I recreate it,as it was then?It had the effect of an orchestra of ever distant golden bells,of every shape and size,whose conductor is the breeze of a hypnotic summer afternoon. An endless, fragile molten tingling,rippling out in concentric circles from the heart of the sun. It was the very soul of warmth and light

I unconsciously leaned forward into this bright exaltation,this rapture of sound,as if aware even then the breath of it would save me. She took no notice of me,the twisted black shadow hanging over her radiant head like a hawk. What a dark portent of things to come,sweet Christine!

A bump in the road roused poor Roland,and he mumbled something queer in his half sleep,gathering Christine under his arm."No Christine,no more my dear .As we've promised. As we've promised." "Yes papa" She answered obediently,and kissed him on his sallow cheek,while the magic song ebbed away into the night forever. I tried to catch it with my heart,my soul,my dead hands.

As we neared the Perros cemetery,Roland awoke fully,with a start. He looked about in bewilderment,as if the nightmare from the woods had just passed him again in his sleep,brushing him with the tip of a black wing. Soon it was behind us,and he was himself again. Nearly himself .He was too deep in thought,ruminating over an idea which was alternately,a great inspiration,and a rending torment. His hands went to his face,in a gesture of weeping,then to his heart while he gazed upward,beyond the black ceiling of the coach,his lips moving in silent prayer. I suddenly felt like an intruder.

He had been concealing something in the greatcoat,along with Christine,which,upon observing him retrieve it,I assumed he must value equally,if not more,for he handled it with absurd care.I recognized the shape immediately. It was a violin. As it had no case,I was certain it must have sustained damage during their flight,and I wondered what he meant in taking it out right here _This_ was his art! Was he going to play right here in the apoplectic venue of the carriage?

Instead of lifting it to his breast,with two trembling,but determined hands he held it out to me. I felt,more than saw,Christine rise up in alarm,her eyes wide,her back stiff and straight as a soldiers."you must take it" He insisted."For the kindness you've shown us..For saving my Christine. I've had it since before she was born,and now it is yours,a heartfelt gift from us,friend Erik!"I held the violin,and I would have eased his heart by accepting it,but we had just entered a clearing simultaneously with the moon,and with everything thrown into brilliant relief,I saw truly,what it was he offered.

It an instrument like no other in the world. Rather over sized,as they go but exquisitely carved. The shoulders were deeply notched and wide,in a way which made one think of lowered wings. Then neck was long,strong but delicate,and graced by the head of an angel,or siren. Her eyes were closed in an ineffable expression of sorrow. Its curves were not angular,but flowing and sensuous,strangely mutable. Caressing its outline,it seemed never to be a fixed shape,but conforming and yielding to the slightest pressure of my hand,my fingertips. Perhaps this was just a trick of the moonlight,but even through my gloves,the lines of it sent a quivering thrill through me which was both terrifying and sweet.

The color of it was singular. It was black,but not an ordinary black,a translucent ebony whose depths shifted like a bottomless pool. Within,swam amorphous, pearlescent forms,rising to the surface and drifting down again in endless variations. Then I noticed the high bridge,and the double strings. The strings

"which tremble only for one another"and recognized,not a simple violin,But the viola d' amor,the silver voice of love.

Astonished,almost in pain,I handed him the instrument back. He would not take it."It's beautiful" I said "But it would be useless to me,as I do not play."How this lie made my throat burn!Roland was wounded. His eyes grew huge and wild,gathering all the green tints of the moon. He shook his head

emphatically,and in a passion,seized my cloak in both hands,so the violin was almost crushed between us."You do play,Erik! You play like no one else. The truth was in your hand when we greeted one another-_then_ I knew,and I was glad because I had something of myself to give you.. to repay you for your selflessness--" "If it eases your conscience" I answered,trying to untangle myself from his iron grasp."I will tell you,I'm not as charitable as you believe. If you had met me yesterday,or tomorrow,I might have been someone else" I freed myself,unintentionally knocking him backwards. He was unfazed."But I have only to do with tonight,and tonight you are benevolent!"

Christine, balanced precariously on the edge of the bench,alert as a cat,suddenly rose to her feet,and putting her weight firmly against her fathers arm,shook him with all her strength."Papa no!"She cried"He's refused it. He said it with his own mouth,he doesn't play. _He won't play!_ What would he do with it then?Please Papa,don't let him take it. Don't make him!"

This outrageous display of ill manners was followed by an even more spectacular torrent of grief,and tears, so earnest,I felt it in my own soul. Roland looked helplessly around,from me in my cryptic silence,to his prostrate daughter,and back to me.

With all the gentleness I could garner from my sparse inventory,I handed the little girl her fathers violin. Her small soft arms closed around it as if it were a dear living thing .Her tears ceased,and she returned my gesture only with a gaze of woeful relief. Roland collapsed in his seat."Christine"He sighed,turning his heavy head away,unable to look at either of us. I would let Christine have her violin,but the subject was not over between Roland and I.

We stopped just a quarter mile from our final destination,to give the horses water and recover our equanimity. Even I was enough of a gentleman to know you should never part badly with someone.

We were by a field,near the junction of two main roads,the one descending steeply to the sea,the other climbing to the town, and the landscape stretched before like a languid dream .It is not a picture I would soon forget,for it is the enchanted stage where Christine plays forever.

The ocean,far below us,was as quiet as glass,and full of pale saffron stars,of shifting phosphorescences and deep mercurial shadows. It drew the eye on to the infinitesimal,vanishing into a haze where the moon lolled like a silver gondola. Fantastic shapes towered in sharp relief against the muted horizon,fomorian sculptures of granite which gave the illusion,Between the shifting clouds and the rocking sea,of gently swaying. Here was the elements crude rendering of Prometheus,his arm raised defensively toward the sky,Endymion in his eternal sleep of love,and the great phenix with his wings outspread,all alive beneath the lucent heavens.

Christine was ebullient. Delivered from her grief without a moments reflection. She stretched her dimunitive frame to its limit,and turned her face toward the sky,letting the moon christen her in pure light. So enraptured was she,by the shimmering night that she forgot the biting cold. She obtained her fathers permission to explore the misty field for for shells, fragrant winter grasses and flowers,and whatever dark things children fill their pockets with,then departed our dull company. Roland and I found two opposing rocks and sat down,facing each other,while my driver went on an errand down to the water.

"I'm sorry if my daughter has offended you" he said sadly."I'm sorry if I have offended you" I assured him I was not at all offended,that on the contrary I was grateful,because I'd had the joy of hearing Christine sing. He looked startled."It is strange that you,her benefactor,should be the last to hear her ,and fitting I suppose that she charmed you,since she will never again have the opportunity here."Now I was stunned. My heart was racing with a terrible presentiment."What exactly do you mean.. Is she ill?Her voice.. its-" The words died in my throat,I felt choked,wretched. I was so sick of death!and now this."..An angels voice!" He continued for me."Tell me!Is she dying?"I cried despite myself."Dying!..heavens my friend,does she look sick to you?"He seemed ridiculously surprised that I should think such a thing."I meant,her voice,it is an instrument of heaven,and must never be misused again for earthly pleasure"He stopped,whether attempting to detect my approval,or simply gage my reaction,I don't know. I remained as stoic as my indignation allowed.

He continued trying to explain himself."You see,we had another motive for stopping in Le Mans. We were going to work. It's not our habit to receive money for our music,but I was desperate to avoid making myself a burden in Perros. I thought if we associated ourselves with one of the traveling fairs... Well,it was work.

In our home,before Paris,the music is what we loved the most. To entertain at the fairs,or the marketplace,or at weddings. Whenever Christine was not at her lessons,she was with me,singing for the crowds while I accompanied her on the violin. Sometimes a neighbor joined us and we'd have a small band of sorts,with a hurdy gurdy or a mandolin. We never accepted payment. I made my modest living as a farmer,and that sufficed, but Christine's mother,who was already frail,fell ill,and I did not have the means to care for her. She died last winter.

After this we had no family in Sweden,so we came to Paris. We came and we played in the streets,and I looked for work,but it was worse than you can imagine!Oh my friend you have no idea-that so many many people can pass by and never see you! Then there was the terrible carnival,and after we escaped the forest my mind was willing to believe anything!I though t that I was wrong,that somehow I had insulted God,and we swore on our knees at the side of the road that we would forsake anything if he would save us,but all we had was our music!So we promised.. We promised God.. and then you came.."He broke off in an agitation of grief. I was grieved as well,in my way. I did not know whether to knock him to the ground,or laugh at him. Either would have had the same effect. Or worse yet,I could remove my disguise,then he would know,in all his cringing horror,that God does not make bargains with men.

"What makes you think your silence pleases God?" I asked coldly. He moved to answer,but the words were not there. He sat with his mouth agape,his eyes like broken glass in the moonlight. I was compelled now,though I admired him,to humble him for his stupidity."You believe I arrived by intervention!..No,I had been on that road for hours,days,a century without respite,without one whisper of divine guidance,though I listened till my ears bled,and you are foolish enough to think I arrived in a thunderbolt,exclusively for your benefit.. What sort of a confounded God would demand one child's song be mute when he ignores the cries of the entire world!""I see I am sadly misread. I am not a fanatic my friend-""What difference is it to me?After tonight we need never meet again,and you may go on believing what you will"He hung his head and said nothing more,for such a length of time I thought he'd fallen asleep. Then he looked up,and spoke earnestly."I want to show you something, Then perhaps you will understand-I may be mad Erik,but I'm no ordinary lunatic!"

He retrieved the violin from the coach and came back to his seat on the rock. He laid it across his knees,staring down at it for a long while,without moving as if he were silently communing with it. The mournful eyes of the angel opened. It was an illusion,a sleight caused by alternating depths of light and shadow passing over the surface,but it unnerved me.

How can I describe the passion with which he raised the instrument to his breast? I knew then he was no common street fiddler. Once at twilight,in the orchard behind our house I saw our maid lifted that way by her lover at the peak of a strident argument. He'd meant to shake her,or perhaps even dash her against a tree,but was instead dissolved by her embrace,undone completely by the sweep of her hair against his neck as her penitent head fell to his shoulder. This was Roland now,undone,but triumphant, once again in his element.

The first long note he drew out chilled my soul. It was as fathomless,as cold and argent as the sea below us,yet it answered itself with a plaintiff echo no broken spirit on earth could equal,and I began to understand with that first silver moan,what Roland meant. God was not above,but inherent.It called Christine from the meadow,and she came,holding her skirt full of flowers and shells,and sank down in a trance by her fathers feet.

He played a piece by Vivaldi,which is usually accompanied by a lute,but without it,and with the ocean sighing around us the notes stretched with such a sharp plangent sweetness,they seemed not notes at all but the secret voice of the dark spangled skies above us,and all the eternal,and the invisible watching us in the night. It Was the voice again of those lovers in the orchard. Hers,high and dulcent, pleading in all its softness for one word of recognition,and his in sonorous reply,unyielding, distant yet on the verge of grief and surrender. Their voices,the strings,shivered like candlelight,pulsed,held usunder in a breathless void,then at last came together in pensive accord. From there he flowed into a suite unknown to me,each movement forming such a singular vision I knew he must be the composer. He had found a sublime voice for his inspiration,for the music told of another abiding love. A love of home and land. I claimed no country myself,and could hardly empathize with anyones homesickness,but the longing his strings articulated was familiar enough to me. I stood with Roland on the verge of his glacial lake,but did not mourn the flowers of memory,I gazed into the blue water and mourned my own reflection,and the emptiness around it. The sweet silver bird of music soared into the air with frost on her wings.

Roland at last put his bow down,exhausted,and Christine,roused from her trance threw her arms around his him and begged him to go on,as if it were the last time again."I'm all out of music for tonight Christine." He laughed,"But perhaps Erik will play for us,since it is such a rare evening!" I was bewitched again. I could not pass up the opportunity to make the magic violin sing under my touch,but I was also morbidly apprehensive. How,from just my handshake he could have guessed, that "I played like no one else" was a mystery. I played well enough,but the great burning desire to play what was in my soul had thus eluded me,and after Roland,s performance,I would certainly look like a fool,or at least cause my friend to further doubt his own judgment.

I had even composed bits and pieces in vain hope that it would summon the necessary magic to my hands,but they were no agent,only further frustration. To placate my vanityah ,vanity!I would often refashion them into vocal arrangements,A medium of course,which I beat the very Gods of music at.

My repertoire seemed too solemn for my present companions,so I went back to my years with the romany,to the master fiddlers of the carpathians whose passions were the frenetic mazurkas,the wedding waltzes,and the dark fairy tales which could only be told through strings and drums. I'd heard these so many times,and loved them so well in those days,they were etched into my blood. I could play them spontaneously,and it was almost a perverse desire I felt to draw mad,unrestrained sound from this venerable instrument.

Christine was delighted by the wild music.She had never heard the likes of it before. The Scandinavian dances were playful,or lofty and sweet with summer flowers and blue skies. These spoke of the jagged foreboding mountain peaks rising up through eternal shadow,the black fragrant primeval forests ruled by wolves and witches,and the captive tzigane who throw themselves away for love. Roland was not as charmed as his daughter. He sat on his rock in a state of anxiety,no doubt wondering if he had misread me. I think the raw,fiery voice suddenly rising from this almost holy agent frightened him beyond words. But I knew she was capable. When Roland placed her in my hands,she had changed,in the treacherous starlight,to the siren.

Christine danced like a mad demon. She was a blur,reduced to elements of dark and light,but she did not sing,or even hum to the tune. Once she paused,and demanded her father join,she was tired of dancing alone. As always with her,he complied,and they made a strange,captivating pair whirling around in that spellbound landscape.

As we were finally preparing to leave,Roland quietly complimented me on my playing. But that was all he said. He was far from feeling anything near what I felt when he played. It was understandable,but still served to remind me with great pain,what I longed to do and couldn't. Incredibly,he asked me again if I would please except the violin. I thought of the way it smiled beneath my fingertips,of the unearthly song it sang.. and then I thought of Christine's tears. And then we made a strange bargain. I told him I would take simple possession of the violin if he would agree to let Christine continue singing,but that I would not take it from Perros. He argued at first,and would not,no matter how I threatened,tell me why he refused to have it near him. He said If we remained friends,he would perhaps tell me someday. He agreed to it at last,and I told him that I would leave it a niche in the rocks near the shore,and I would fashion a case to protect it from the elements. I said I would come for it when I could. The final part of the deal was merely a spoken wish,that If and when I came this way again he would teach me to play as he played. With great sadness,I realized the improbability of this,of ever bridging the distance from Paris to Perros often enough so they would not forget me.

Within twenty minutes we were saying good by. We arrived at comfortable house that still had lights burning in its lower story,and they revealed two anxious shadows rushing to the front window at the sound of the coach. Christine was completely asleep on her fathers shoulder,and far removed from her vigilant post as keeper of the violin. How Roland would explain its fate to her was beyond me,but my pictures of what she might make of it were endlessly amusing.

He insisted in all his blind kindness,that I come in and rest by the warmth of the fire before leaving. I saw,standing at the lighted door,a rather severe looking woman,and a round gentleman,and had no desire to reveal myself to anymore strangers. I doubted anyone was as liberal as Roland. How my heart ached as that unaware golden form disappeared into the arms of the old woman,and the depths of the house. But why_ why.. _what did she represent to me then,and what still?Roland held on to my arm,even with the restless horses jostling the rig forward, tears in his pale eyes,as if I could still be persuaded. I told him I would come back,to ensure he kept his promise,and that I would send a letter telling him the exact location of the violin,in case he gave up his superstitious oaths.

Again,I was completely alone,except for the disgruntled driver. He'd be even angrier before the trip was over. We drove down to the sea,and when I told him what I was doing there,he lost his temper. He cursed at me,he swore I was the most despicable employer,and I might not turn my back too long for he might just be gone,coach horses and all,and what kind of an eccentric can't take a train. I told him he could do as he pleased,but he'd never get away from me in Paris If he did. He was still shouting as I walked down to the water,and his shrill harping was soon swallowed in the crash and hiss of the tide.

I had demolished one of the small,self contained compartments under the benches to make a case for the violin. I felt as if I were putting it to death,interring it. I don't know how long I walked along the peaceful shore,scaling rocks,feeling them for secret passages and doors,before I found the cave. The moon had sunk low in the faded sky,and the air,already so cold,had shifted to its deathlike pre dawn chill. I was climbing up to examine some promising shadows when my foot slipped, throwing me into a deep hole I had earlier overlooked. I found first that I could fit my entire body into it comfortably,then as my eyes adjusted to the deeper darkness,I saw a space stretched before me,about about nine yards in length,and as wide as the reach of my outstretched arms,like a very long hallway. Lined up all along the sides,were boulders of varying sizes. I sank down on one of these with the violin in its primitive coffin,at my feet.

In the granite tomb,Christine came to me again,a fragile shadow. She knelt at my feet with her head bowed. Was this Christine?In the carriage she had invoked my sister simply because she was a child,but,she was only a composite,unknown to me. By the end of the trip all shades of Janthe had dissipated, and something darker had taken its place next to her,but I could not define what it was. I knew this was Janthe now,kneeling in the still darkness,and memory had cast her in Christine's aureate form to torment me.

Janthe was born less than a year after me. My parents must have had good reason to believe they were damned,For while still in the throes of the horror I had presented them,they were again visited with the unspeakable. She was a perfect child. Where I had issued from a nightmare,attributed to everything from curses to a shock my mother received she was attacked by a wolf in the woods behind the orchard Janthe was a gift from the angels of grace. It was not until months later,when it was noticed that she neither smiled,nor responded to my mothers face,that they discovered she was completely blind.

From the beginning we were forsaken to each other exclusively. At night we would huddle together in the small cold bedroom off the side of the house,and listen to my parents oaths,my mothers crying,my fathers curses,until our heads were throbbing,and our eyes stinging with tears,and we'd clap our hands over our ears and try to sleep.

Neither of us were ever given a traditional education,or even proper one,as other children received. They could well have afforded to send us away,but they preferred no one know we even existed,I in particular. I was an abomination,evidence of a terrible sin.Although,through my own career as alchemist and thaumaturgist,I found this sin was likely a restorative compound given to expectant women. Janthe was considered useless,and taught only to make lace and bake. Because I at least had all my senses,I was schooled in my fathers trade. From the time I could hold a hammer I was learning carpentry and masonry,and this afforded me the opportunity to learn my letters,and eventually to read. I learned early to hide any loftier aspirations from my father. How I hated this. My only comfort was discovering a prodigious talent for learning any new skill. There was nothing I couldn't master within an hour,and improve upon in the next. At eight I already outmatched my fathers skills in construction,Though I would not have the audacity or stupidityto demonstrate it.

It was meaningless to me anyhow. Music is what I wanted,but I was neither offered lessons,or even allowed to possess an instrument .I began collecting any odd scraps left unattended or forgotten. Pieces of wood,bones,broken glass,bits of hide and tin,and fashioning my own orchestra. I would work in secret,then hide the results the trees or hedges until I could get away from the house again.

It was such a joy when we could get free. When our respective torments of the day were over, Janthe and I would escape to the orchard. It was huge,and made up the bulk of our property,and up against it was the forest,with the river running through it. We were of course,forbidden to go into the forest,but the orchard itself was so deep and untended,it seemed that whatever lurked in the darkness of the woods would find itself just as at home there,and I sometimes wondered as I got older what our parents motives were in letting us go into the orchard at all.

Poor Janthe.I could never fathom how the walk was for her,how long it must have seemed in her darkness. I painted pictures for her as we navigated the stony paths,the little creeks and the hollows.

To our right were the great crumbling bastides, built by pirates and devils. Once great fortresses,they were now watchtowers of the dead,swirling with ghosts. I would tell her to listen very carefully with her keen ears,for the whispering throngs. They came,with shuffling footsteps and chains scraping along dank stones. Then one out of the mass would croak out her name,and she would shriek in fear,until I uttered oaths to vanquish them all.

To our left,were the golden palaces of the sea,with their kings and queens,forever young. If she listened here,she would hear the sweetest,most unearthly music. Arias of harps and sirens,the silver trumpets of angels.

The orchard is where I ultimately hid anything I valued,including my handmade instruments. I kept them nearest the edge of the forest,right where the golden fruit trees began tangling with the black oak and the birch. When we were tired of whatever games we played there, or of telling stories,I would play for her,or let her pick out her own rudimentary tunes. In spirit,she was as good as me in drawing sound from the odd shapes and compositions,but her favorite was a thing that required no playing at all. It was a contraption I called a thermal harp. I thought of it one night,while watching a mobile of little bells spin in the rising heat of an oil lamp.

It consisted of an adjustable heat chamber,which held a small candle,and two interlocking cylinders. The interior one was an apparatus carved from hollow bone,and fixed with two sets of strings,divided horizontally into seven chords. The porous bone made an excellent sound conductor. The outside cylinder was a piece thin,stiff hide which held adjustable plectrums in seven horizontal slots. When the candle was lit,the trapped heat spun the the outer cylinder,causing the picks to pluck out a crude tune on the strings. Slots at the top of the candle compartment could be opened and closed to raise and lower the heat ,thus adjusting the speed of the cylinder and the tempo of the tune.It was by no means a sophisticated machine,and depending on how cleverly you manipulated the picks and the flame,the tune could be as dulcent as wind chimes,or as cacophonous as rattling pans. Janthe had a way of making it play sweetly,like a music box,so I appointed her its keeper,even allowing sometimes for her to light the little flame.

It was in these days too,that I discovered the power of my voice,though it was raw and unstable,It already possessed the unearthly register that it does today. In the house,I dared not open my mouth even to speak,for fear of sending my mother into one of her terrible spells,If had forgotten myself and started singing,it would have apocalyptic. But in the shelter of the orchard,where the entire world was blind,if not receptive,I could test my limits and my range until the trees shook from their roots to their top most branches. I loved nothing more than creating thunder,but for Janthe, I sang softly. Janthe,who knew nothing beyond the world we created.

Despite her beauty,of form and disposition,she was as deprived of love as I was. Our mother couldn't tolerate the feel of Janthes searching hands any more than she could the sight of my ravaged face. Janthe lived in a singular darkness,shaped by the feel of silent things. She did not know the vital geography of the human face.

One evening in late summer,the last summer we would ever spend together,I was singing a ballad for her called "the bad mother." I sent my voice wandering from tree to tree,and up and down the paths,as the bad mother,driven mad by guilt searched the woods for the child she murdered. As the song reached its peak,with her anguished confession echoing in every corner, Janthe suddenly reached out and clasped my face in both hands. I did not wear my hated disguise out here,so there was no resistance between her smooth fingertips and my triturated flesh. With her thumbs she felt the hollowness of my eyes,the ridge of cold bone which served as my brow. She felt the overlapping patches of skin which hung like melted wax,and my collapsed nose,which clung to its bridge on one side,as if it were like anyone else's, then plunged into darkness on the other. I was petrified by this intimacy. She would run away screaming any moment like our mother,I could do nothing but suffer under her infernal caresses and brace myself. But I was only a child myself,and could not estimate,beyond my own pain,how the world would present itself to Janthe.

She did not gasp or flinch,or have any sort of spectacular reaction at all,then she put her hands to her own face and felt it as she had mine."We are not the same?"She asked,"No,not the same"I confirmed,still waiting for her to run away."Why?"..And I told her a lie which would serve her for the rest of her life. Oh that she had lived to uncover the lie and laugh at me!"We are blessed Janthe" I said."We are the only people in the world faces of any kind. All other people have heads like newel posts.. smooth and flat except for the eyes!..And you must be careful,because they see us,and our beautiful sculptured heads,and they are jealous. This is what makes them so cruel and temperamental." "But what about the people in our stories?"She pursued"They have faces,beautiful faces!You've said so""They belong to us,Janthe,they are whatever we want them to be."

This was all in keeping with our lives. People barely existed outside of our imagination anyhow. What did it matter if they had faces or not. She died five months later without ever having cause to doubt me. But I refuse to think of that,no matter how she haunts me.

We had one more errand before we finally made it back to Paris. There were acres of forest In Le Mans,and I had to guess,by deduction,exactly where a terrified man and his child dropped their belongings as they fled. Fortunately the sun was up by then,and I found the scattered contents easily. There were her little brown boots,still tied to the sack. The soles were worn through, half the stays were missing,and the leather laces were broken and retied in half a dozen places. Along with the tidy rolls of clothing laying in the snow,was a doll with Christine's gold hair and blue eyes. She even wore the same white dress,with the lace neck and impossible row of black buttons down the front. This made her a particularly unsettling picture,the little figure laying there staring lifelessly up at the gray sky. Something stopped me as I was kneeling to repack the bag,I can't say with certainty what it was.It felt all at once as if the air were condensing,pressing in on me until my heart was thumping out of its groove. I put it off to a critical lack of sleep,but I was better when it was far behind us.

I bought her a new pair of boots in town,and had them sent,along with all of their other things, to Perros. Anonymously.

In the carriage I found her shells and flowers. The flowers were already withered. I removed my gloves and pressed them between my cold palms,rolling out the fragrant sap. They were still sweet. dead and sweet.

That morning I had a horrible dream,sleeping with those crushed flowers in my hand.

It was in the time of Mezenderan, and I was reaching the end of my favor with the shah,when my excesses began outweighing my usefulness. I was still no better than a child,and he had continuously encouraged these absurdities as long as it served him. He was stupid. He truly believed I had divine powers,but assumed rather than being inherent,I was channeling them through the agent of the hashish, and the opium,and the constant supply of potions and wine he offered me. He had no idea how I rejected any notion of altering my conscious. How would it have served me,whose mind,in its hideous disguise,was already stellar. So he was the shah of Persia? He was common,and except for where his rabid paranoia dictated,applied it to all thought processes. Another example of this was the parade of concubines he supplied me with. He knew I was ugly. But he presumed I was a young man,like any other,and these were his slaves,automatons without ideas of their own. He underestimated all of us. These girls had nothing I wanted,And when I was bitter and weary of pretending they might,I had no compelling reason to report them to the shah for fleeing from my company.

As I said,the Shah was naturally paranoid. But after I'd rebuilt his palace,I suddenly became the thorn in his black heart He began believing I held sway over his entire court,and they were on the verge of turning against him. He continued to smile at me,indulging me like a son,while he plotted my destruction in his chambers.

Despite this, I remained his favorite weapon,though the executions became indiscriminate,and pointless. He had me doing away with common prisoners. I suppose he wanted to see how willing I was to destroy myself before he went to the trouble of undertaking it himself. It became an almost daily circus of despicable carnage. Inmates were rounded up and lined against the prison wall,and the most virile,or dangerous looking was picked out of these by the Shah,or one of his men,to spar with me in the square. We were both fitted with some kind of weapon,a symitar or a dagger,or even a whip,but this part of it was simply a joke,to fortify the competition. In the end my opponent died,and he always died the same way,with the lasso under his chin.

I wasn't always the finely tuned killing machine. Just as I sparred with these doomed men,the shah also amused himself by attempting to toy with my mental fortitude. I had an unfortunate flaw. Asked to pick the victim myself,I would inevitably flounder in the arena when it came to fighting him,and let myself be wounded or bested temporarily in some way. Of course I was still too valuable to the shah,I would not be relinquished to death at the hands of a peon. I had concealed at my side,a small needle like stiletto,which had been dipped in a virulent poison. I slipped this into my opponents thigh,and he would be dead in seconds.

If the purpose of all this was too diminish me,to lay the remains of my soul to waste,it was working. I was physically sick until sickness became an undefinable concept ,omnipresent in my head. And then I Simply absorbed it.. I was the sickness.

One day,I flatly refused to pick my opponent. The Shah,who had never been rebuffed,was out of his head,but he already had his secret plan for me nearly laid out,and could do nothing. Still,I think his pride at least would have required he hit me with something. I was never to find out .The little Sultana,who enjoyed this phase of the event nearly as much as she did watching men die,was there and she stepped up,announcing that she wanted to choose.

She sauntered up and down the row of men,who towered so absurdly above her,shaking her head. But she was making a show,she had already made her choice. He was not much more than boy,even younger than myself,just incarcerated the day before for some minor offense,trespassing in the Shahs private gardens.

She wanted him because he was handsome,she told her father,and had the eyes of a boy at the palace who she disliked. I turned in horror to the Shah and his counsel,in appeal,and they burst out laughing,and then she informed her father that today,she wanted an audience of her friends,and to be in the square with me,to show how I had taught her to use the lasso. She got her wish.

I can never forget this. no matter how I try to scour it from my memory. The burning heat of the Arabian summer,the sand flying up in my eyes,and all around the sultana in her bright robes,the faces watching from the stands. I couldn't kill him. I stood dumb in the arena. Because of the Sultana,we were not givin any weapons,we had to use our hands .And the boy stood in front of me,his hands raised,as if he were about to engage in fair combat with a peer. As we fought,I kept trying to think of some way out. I could find none which would not lead to the death of at least one of us.

The Sultana became impatient,I think she knew I was stalling. I had dealt him a fairly good blow,and as he kneeled, stunned,attempting regain ground,she leapt up behind him and with one lightning flick of her wrist,had the lasso pulled tightly around his neck. She was quick,but clumsy and it happened before I could stop it. The rope constricted and crushed his windpipe. The Sultana hadn't the strength to kill him cleanly,even if she'd meant to. She took several stumbling steps backward,and I thought for a moment she looked afraid,but it was gone quickly,and she stood staring dumbly at me,with her hands at her sides .I was frozen,just as the young man was motionless before me. blood welled from his lips,and his whole body heaved for one breath. His eyes were wide,and fixed on some point just above,The brilliant sun crowning the sultanas head.

My thoughts were complete chaos. I realized I had no choice now but to dispatch him,but still I could not move. I came around to a commotion in the stands,someone crying out,calling a name. A woman had breached the outer gate and was fighting her way through the crowd with furious strength,not even the shahs men were able to restrain her,and preferred to stand back and let her spend herself.

She was so far gone with grief,it would have been better had they killed her where she stood,than let her continue. She tumbled over the wall into the arena. She fell hard,and lost her breath,but at an instant was at the boys side,and had him cradled in her arms,moaning and calling out his name. He did not recognize her,and even without my assistance,in a matter of minutes would be past all knowing. Even disheveled by grief,This woman was beautiful. but I was polluted,and it may have been her torment which made her so alluring to me. As she wept her hair covered his face,his chest. How I wished despite the horror,I was the soul in that dying body. There was no way to tell her age,she was a caryatid with her arms embracing eternity,but there was a similarity with the dead boy,in her eyes. She could have been a sister,but sisters do not weep so openly for a brother. He was her son.

She suddenly paused in her mourning,and looked about wildly,and when she noticed me,she was up on her feet and had me in a death grip,all the fury of her anguish unleashed. I tried to subdue her,but she was mercurial,and I did not want to kill her! Though she was strong, she was no warrior,and her hands only sought blindly to destroy me. When she made an attempt to gouge my eyes out,something abruptly halted her as if she knew she was face to face with death himself. All at once,her strength was gone,she fell to the ground whimpering like a child. She moved backwards across the sand between her dead son and the living corpse she had been fighting,then she collapsed on the ground begging the gods to annihilate her.

While she was incapacitated,the guards seized their opportunity,and I thought certainly she would be joining her son. But if they were going to execute her,I knew it wouldn't be in front of the jeering crowd,most of whom were children. They took her,but she did not resist now. All the fire in her was dead. I did not see where they took her,but sometime later I thought I heard screams,and whether they were death screams,or shouts of anguish,I could not determine.

I waited until the Sultanas ladies came and fetched her from my sight,waited until the crowd had dispersed,and I threw myself down in the sand near the boy. I never lingered in the presence of death,but now I was compelled. What had I done?I was an artful assassin,no doubt. If the death I brought was unjust,at least it was merciful,but today I stood like a coward and let an ignorant child usurp my power. I was nothing but a murderer. Worse.

What was death,when orchestrated with such absurd cruelty?I felt a presence in the arena with me,far out in the encircling shadows. It was tangible enough,I could imagine it coming forward if I called it.I called the name I had heard the woman say,but it tasted blasphemous on my tongue.In the heat,the flies were already on him and his eyes stared into the sun,and its twin reflections danced in the empty blackness. I tried to close them,but they remained half open still.I looked at him and tried to imagine him alive,but I couldn't ,all I saw was her,the woman who had cried over him.I saw _her_ long almond eyes,soft even in the bitter light of grief,I felt that unyeilding strength again,The horror of her prying hands on my face,cool fingers,soft hands,even as they turned to weapons against me.

Oh but where have I gone!The dream,I had a dream... Well it is all in that realm now,what was real,and what I wished,and what is too profane,or too sweet to remember willingly... it all rushes back in the helpless hours of sleep!

For weeks after the boys death,I avoided the Shah and his palace. He did not send anyone out to question me,and I knew why. What purpose to lure me back?I had ceased to be an asset,and was now on the same death list from where so many condemned had fallen into my hands. I was not a blind target by any means. I had an informant in one of the Shahs own men,the Daroga who had brought me from India. I do not know what he found in me worth saving,but I had brought him out of some crisis with my morbid humor,and he disliked the shah. So I knew the span of my life now,and even the intricacies of its conclusion. But I found it hard to care how and when they disposed of me.

The woman was still alive,at least physically. I saw her one evening in the market place,wandering through the crowds like a ghost. She was alone and no one took any notice of her at all. What terminal lack of judgment possessed me,I don't know. The spectacle in the arena had caused my mind,so precise in its movement,to wobble off its axis,and so guided by the voices of chaos and desire,I began following her.

Ah!how would it have gone if she had come out of her dream and noticed my shadow that first evening?It would have been over with in a scream,a look of horror. But instead fate allowed me the anonymity to insinuate myself into her world unchallenged,and my empathy,my guilt and my admiration,met with blind infatuation.

She lived alone on the outskirts of the village,in a modest stone hut. No one ever called on her,and there was no evidence to suggest anyone but her son had ever lived there with her.. but the evidence.. who's death had I caused! The windows were bare,no dressings or shades and it was easy to see by moonlight,how stark and simple the interior was. Nothing but what was necessary. A bed,a shelf with pots,a table and chair,it had the austerity of a monks dwelling. But where the inside was sterile,the outside was a living oasis.

The small property was bordered by willow,pear and citrus trees,and flowered vines hung from the branches like veils,sweet potato,pea,and snake vine. There were roses,and poppies,fennel and antimony all in such profusion they nearly hid the house. Around the back was a fruit garden,and a sanctuary with a pond and a fountain. What was most remarkable in this uncultivated eden,were not the flowers,but the statues. They were life sized,carved from the same black marble as the Shahs palace. They represented not gods and goddesses, but humans. Their faces recalled not,those smirking, pious deities,but the trenchant masks of Assyrian kings and soldiers. They did not simply stand in passive repose,but were stretched into positions of supplication,and rapture, in death throes or dances,they seemed to be always shifting in the green shadows.

At first I would only follow her,and tell myself if she did not come to the square,It was just as well. But I was enamored, and soon,found myself nightly,in the little sanctuary behind the house. The overgrown pathway to the to her door was lined with colored lamps,and coming in,she lit them one by one so the garden and its statues were ablaze with moire light,but in the house,she sat in virtual darkness.

Sometimes she would light one small candle,and sit at her table with a book spread before her,leaning her face on her hand,but she didn't read. Her gaze continually wandered to the outer darkness,to where I sat watching,by the pond,or she would lay her head down and weep into her arms. She drifted in and out of the nights,and the days like a pale shadow. And I believed we were connected somehow by this. I longed to tell her that I grieved for her son,that I had not meant for him to die,but what an atrocious insult such an apology would have been,when in truth,even I doubted my own sincerity. Yet it tormented me! To know I had caused this.. How many others had I condemned to this living death?

The more I agonized over this,the more foolish I became. I would bring her things,books and silk,ambergris,and incense like a lover,and leave them at her window. She ignored the last three,but kept the books at her table. At night she sat by her candle and read,and less and less was she distracted,and more and more I wished to find some way of speaking with her.

When she walked home from the village,she often sang to herself,always the same song;

"All night,the sky,its moon and its stars

keep me awake in love

ah,awake from love!

How can I tell you my life,

I loved you before we were

my sweetheart,before we were!

Tomorrow is too far away

And yesterday is forgotten

All we are given is tonight

To drink of happiness

Ah life,what is it but a night,

The sky,the moon and stars

keeping us awake in love

Ah,awake from love!

One night as she stood at her window,overlooking the sanctuary,she began humming the tune,And I,forgetting myself, unconsciously echoed the words back. I knew because of the sorcery of my voice,it would sound as if it were coming from a great distance,or even from the sky. She wasn't frightened. She paused in her song,leaning out into the darkness listening for the echo,but of course she heard only the soft wind through the treetops.

So encouraged,I came almost every evening there after. I brought her songs in persian,all those I knew well,and did my best translating others from french, swahili, spanish,all languages where I knew music. My voice stayed at a respectful distance,even if I did not,far out on the perimeters the night. Because of the nature of this relationship I suppose,my offerings were too often mournful or ponderous with longing. This was a disservice to both of us,especially since of late,the only peace I knew was beneath her naked window, watching her shadow drift across the candle light

In time,I did bring a more inspiring message,and it had a profound effect on my grieving lady. Oh I could speak to her,as I never spoke to anyone,with words I wrote,I could draw her so near,console,uplift,anything but let her know me! Such a self aggrandizing passion play can not run indefinitely without consequences,especially when its lead is an unredeemable monster.

All through the summer I visited her in the sultry garden. I watched the horror I had visited on her mellow into a sweet,fathomless sorrow,and every night I was less cautious,and let my voice come closer and closer,until we were so near once,I could see clearly her expression,as if she were listening to God speak. Then she began asking questions,and how would I have left them unanswered without forsaking my seat in paradise? Who was I and who sent me? I told her some time would tell her,and every night she asked if tonight would be the the night. I should have gone right then and never set foot there again,but instead I said with my heart full as the sea,and my head dumb as the waters of oblivion,..Tomorrow,you will know tomorrow.

By this time,I was an active fugitive from the Shah and his administration,he had his assassins everywhere,but I had Daroga,who risked his own neck over and over to to report the moves of the palace and keep me always one step ahead,saving my life despite the fact that I would have been happy to be rid of it. Only she prevented me from immolating myself. I trusted Daroga completely,so he knew where I spent my restless nights,and when the palace was sleeping,and my lady was within,distracted with her books, he would come on occasion just to sit and talk quietly with me,and shake his head at my ridiculous folly.

So the night came when I was forced to reveal myself,but it had to be done cleverly,so I asked that she put out her lamps,and her candles,and she did. To be near her,in her house!She asked if I was the one who had brought her the books, I said I was,and she asked how I knew that she read,when no other women in the village could read. I said I didn't know any other women,so it was of no consequence. She laughed at this,she laughed!what soft new music this was.

What did I expect to happen?She was only existing in the same world with me as a dark reflection. We could talk for hours,but while every word she spoke was real,real enough that I could have touched it,or held it in my hand,everything I said was a glorious lie,fashioned from the fabric of my soul. She never even asked my name,or offered hers.

She never spoke of her son directly,but offered him little by little in relating the everyday,and the corporeal. I knew_ his _ name,but not that he was her only child,not that he had died,not that he had been thrown into the river for the crocodiles. Jaihru.Jaihru had made the living statues,quarried the marble himself from the hills. He built the pond in the sanctuary,and had helped create the landscape,in all its bright diversity,by his habit of collecting seeds and clippings from roadsides and fields,and older gardens.

My eyes allowed me to see her through the dark,though she could see nothing of me but an outline,and sometimes when she spoke of these things I imagined she was staring directly into my face,with the coldest of expressions, though her voice smiled.

We always sat at a distance from each other, usually at her table in the corner,but walking in the garden,after the moon had fallen too low in the sky to illuminate the land,we were side by side. I could hear her breath,hear the soft crush of the grass beneath her bare feet. I could hear it and feel it. One night,She was talking about one of the statues,a particularly unpleasant figure twisted in agony,with its hands over his eyesOh what did she say! When suddenly she grabbed my hands,and asked me to sing again for her. She hadn't touched me since that day in the arena,and I was transfixed.

I began,in slight uncertainty,the first song which came to mind,her ballad,and as always I was soon transformed by pure sound,and well off guard. I remember that she was still holding my hands,and then she was holding only one and before I could move from her reach she had torn my disguise off. She was not horrified,but she seemed to collapse inwardly,the brilliant light extinguished from her eyes. She was dying in front of me. I wanted to throw myself at her feet,to explain but I knew she was beyond anything I could say to her,neither of us could be saved. I did the only thing I was capable of. I ran!

I spent all the rest of that night wandering through the desert,and the next day meditating in the cool hills by the water,where no one could find me. I knew I couldn't leave things this way. I had to go back.

As soon as the last glow of sunlight faded from the sky,I came to her. She was in the sanctuary,kneeling in front of a stone bench with her head laid on her arms. She stood up immediately when she heard me,all her senses sharpened.

Poised in the darkness,she called my name."Erik,is that you?"The significance of this did not even register with me. I stopped where I was,in the deep shadows of the trees,and she bade me to come closer. When I didn't,she came to me.

Something in her approach was unsettling. There was a purpose to it,a sensuality which did not intrigue,but chilled me. Then she touched me,and I my body did not object,though my instinct and my mind decried it. Wherever she found exposed skin,she caressed, lingered,but her fingers were cold,and I felt I couldn't breath. Then her mouth was close to my ear,and she whispered,with her words like cool thunder"I know who you are-_asto vidatu_!"she had called me the name which means,demon with a noose. I was completely thrown. I felt her push me back against the tree,with something hard and cold across my neck,and I was choking. I tried to tell her I hadn't meant for Jaihru to die. It was an accident,but the words sounded small and stupid."And now it makes no difference"She said"Because tonight they are coming for you,and _you_ will die. And tomorrow,_I_ will be as dead as both of you.""If death is all that awaits either of us,then why should you let the Shah have your revenge.. take it for yourself and die satisfied."Slightly,almost imperceptibly,she released the pressure on my neck,but she was not repentant,only inspired. My will had its own motives. There was something in my hand,cold and hard and slender,I had quietly slipped it from the pocket of my trousers. She did not even feel me move,and only knew too late,and too briefly,that I had plunged the acerose little stiletto, with its load of venom,into her breastbone. Her softness fell against me,and her last breath was like a dark rose,warm against my face.

I held her in my arms until she became heavy,and I came to my senses,having no idea how much time I had left to escape. I laid her down in the tender grass,and kissed her,her still warm lipsI could taste the poison!She was so beautiful,so very beautiful in death!I wondered that all women could not be so.

This was the dream. The horror. I had loved her,though I did not understand love,and I had killed her. And I would always kill anything that stirred me,or dared to love me back for as long as I existed. I had no right to dream of kindness,or of angels with golden voices singing for me. I would go back to where I belonged,exiled in darkness,alone.


	2. Christines testimonial 18751876

CHAPTER TWO

FROM THE ENVELOPE MARKED "ERIK"

CHRISTINES TESTIMONIAL

JUNE 1875

PARIS

Last night I had the strangest dream!..I was crying in the holy chapel, with no one but the apostles keeping watch,and the moons blue light pouring down through the glass walls, and I thought my father came to me. I felt that it was him, a sense of comfort and peace guiding me as I looked into the shadows. Then I was overjoyed,I called to him,I saw him move against the darkness,and he said my name so softly,as papa used to when I was sad,but he did not come. I stepped up and called again anxiously. He stepped forward,and I held out my arms, though I could not say it was him!Everything began to shift and turn ,the night warping all around me in swirls of silver and black,until I had no direction. I saw a man,a tall man very clear,but I couldn't see his face,it was only a chasm,as people have said of ghosts faces,or evil spirits. I was horrified,unable to move or scream,yet,in my soul,I still heard my father! And then I awoke in my bed,and thought I heard him yet,echoing away and somehow all around me.

Maybe the events of the past few months have at last overwhelmed me,and turned my head so, that even blessed sleep is corrupt.

Yesterday was my fifteenth birthday,and La Sorreli, and some of the other ballerinas and singers in my group surprised me with a party of sorts,with cake and brandy and some new hair ribbons and jeweled brooch,in the shape of a peacock. I suppose this was in fun,because the ballerina,Danea who is prone to strange obsessions,had previously been caught swooning over one of our more venerable Tenors, Carolus Fonta. One night,we were waiting in the wings during a performance of the barber of Seville,and as he sang,she nudged me with one elbow,and her opposite companion with the other,For confirmation of his spectacular manly allure. I could not help myself,I scoffed and commented out loud that he looked like a stuffed peacock .The girls behind me,who were looking over my shoulder at Carolus dissolved into laughter,effectively shattering Daneas romantic notions. Now we all call him the 'the old stuffed peacock' when his back is turned.

We were also celebrating my four months anniversary at the opera. There are several of us who share this same date,being in the first influx of performers to be hired for the grand opening of 'opera Garnier. It was quite festive!..Although I prefer to stay back in shadows and not involve myself in any society, I have,and did observe so intimately last night,that the occasion of a party here hardly needs an excuse,and can go on indefinitely without one. So much warmth,and chatterI'm not a lady at all if I repeat here some of the delicious nonsense which rolled off of wine loosened tongues, I hardly feel like one just having listened!Alas,how desolate I felt though. Imagine yourself in a crowd of friends,and warm strangers,feeling alone as if you were on the moon.

Tonight we were rehearsing a german opera, Marschners 'der vampyre.' Lord Ruthven Who is Mateil,the youngest and most handsome tenor was just entering the clearing with the chanting ghostsI am a ghost! and witches,when all at once I felt very cold. The chill seemed to descend on me from the flytowers of the stage like a great dark cloud. Then my knees were very weak,and I was sure my legs would give way beneath me..ah,I felt, _well I felt... _I don't know exactly,but it had some relation to an embarrassment, a terrible flurry I suffered last week running bodily into Mateil in the office hallway. I felt eyes where there were no eyes.

it passed as quickly as it came,and I was myself again. I Think it is the subject matter of our current opera which has me so overwrought. It is long,and dreary,and morbid. I hope we don't perform it again.

Afterwards,heading down the passage which leads to the dormitories,I was overtaken by a troupe of my comrades,all shouting in excitement. They spirited me away to the dressing rooms,and there,indicated with rather exaggerated awe,a package left on my table,along with two dozen white roses. The roses,in their mad abundance,were heavenly,and in the heady scent I nearly forgot the gift,until it was pushed in my hands by an overanxious Danea.

The present!who would send _me_ such a thing! but there was no mistake,as my title,both formal,surname,and christian, What a queer detail this is,no one except mama Valerius and papa ever knew my middle name. Rose.. how droll!Were written in red ink across the top of the box.

It was a coat. The softest ,purest white ermine. Anticipating the cruelties of a winter on my own,I had been saving for a real coat. I did not have the heart to ask mama Valerius,since the professor had so recently died.. and I was also a little afraid she might use the excuse,in her loneliness,that I was uncared for,and make me come back to Perros and stay.

Even if I had the money,I wouldn't buy myself such an ostentatious piece of finery. The style was completely inappropriate for a girl who is barely fifteen. What could I do with it now,except feel entirely silly trying to hide my old clothes beneath its pristine folds?

'Oh,who is it from.. We are so jealous.. Christine has a secret lover!' Their voices all clashed at once. I admonished them,there was _no_ benefactor,and certainly no lover,secret or otherwise. and they needn't be envious because I did not even dream of keeping it.. Even if I had burned it in front of them,their envy would not also go up in cleansing flames. That I had received it was enough to pique them forever... and now my refusal of it caused them to think I was insane as well.

I assumed they hadn't the audacity to peek at the little card attatched to the roses,so I did not tell them what was on it. I only said it was unsigned,with my name at the top... but it was stranger than that. Penned in the same dark red ink,was a stanza from the beggar maid,which,if examined in its context of complete poem,seemed at odds with the message of the gift;

' You will count before your glass

More kisses than the lily has

And more than one valois will sigh

When you pass by.'

It gave me chills! I was not at all versed in Monsieur Baudelaire. I find him too dark and somewhat libidinous. But in Perros we had a copy of the flowers of evilno one claimed it,it was just _there_ and the beggar maid was the one piece I was particularly fond of. I had it memorized entirely,but had not thought of it,or read it since papa died nearly a year ago. Now here it was,gracing my strange roses,and whats more I recall,long ago,standing before my mirror,and with grand and dramatic flourishes,repeating this stanza to an audience of my own reflection.

**JULY 1875**

Well,I have kept the coat! and that strange epistle as well. Not because I am vain,but because I have a notion of them containing a meaning and purpose which is beyond their appearance. I _will_ know it one day. Sometimes,when I am very tired, and cold from the inside out,I lay my head in the white softness of the fur,and find it has a most rich and alluring scent,more intoxicating than the garden of roses,long dead now, which once accompanied it.It is a dark scent of earth and rain and evergreen. It recalls to me precious days I scarcely can remember otherwise,when I was just beyond infancy,before we came to France.

I remember almost nothing from my early life,even the years just before papa died,it is all maddeningly fuzzy. Mama Valerius says it is because I was sick with a fever when I was younger. This is the same illness which compromised my eyesight,so I can read and write well,but when I am on stage,the white faces of the audience look like candle flames. While this might seem insignificant to anyone else,for me,it is devastating! It is impossible,as I perform,to see the reaction of the crowd. Are they bored?are they enthralled? Are they asleep? Even a second class performer such as myself, thrives on the subtle changes of expression which tell her if she or heis reaching the soul. Without it,I often feel as if I am entertaining in a bad dream,where the rest of the world is only a shallow reflection of light and color.



What strange luck has befallen me?Am I cursed,or just too dense to except a blessing when it comes to me? Last night, I was stopped at the door of the dancers dormitory,by Monsieur Debienne. He is a diligent manager,and often patrols these hallways after hours,to reassure us,and himself that we are free of prowlers. This is acceptable of course,although he is rarely seen lurking anywhere else,and does seem to have special interest in this quadrant. I have heard whispered rumors,silly things I would only half believe if told outright,about a ghost haunting the building. Not a passive one either,but an entity with a penchant for terrible mischief. Even If there are ghosts,they never haunt shining new buildings,and the opera has barely been open a year. Still,legends will persist. The girls say it is the ghost of a man who was killed mysteriously in the early years of construction,when he fell from scaffolding near the stage.

I was exhausted after standing through the performance of der vampyre,which had drawn an uncomfortable to lukewarm reaction from the audience. I would have to agree with them. Now I just wanted to throw myself on my bed,costume and all,and sleep forever,and pray the terrible tableau of monsters and spirits did not infiltrate my dreams.

My hand was on the door,and then,Monsieur Debienne was there in front of me."Mademoiselle Daae!" He addressed me,and the and the kindness in his eyes belied the urgency in his tone."You must come with me,right away. The dormitory is no longer your affair" "Ah!What do you mean?"I cried out. Cold fingers gripped my heart,and the most awful possibilities flashed through my mind."My dear,don't look so agitated!" He said,a little softer now." It is good news,and you now have a private room,upstairs" "Good news!" My anxiety was unabated,perhaps even greater now. I was shocked and could think of nothing to do but argue,the thought of being alone at night terrified me. "Monsieur Debienne, I implore you,How ever you have orchestrated this,I do not mean to seem ungrateful,but you have chosen wrong. I do not like to be alone.. I must respectfully declineI was stammering like an idiot! I..I like the common room,and my companions."You cannot refuse Miss" He replied flatly"It has already been arranged,and your old bed is already occupied by another."

I tried stalling,dreading the walk up through the black drafty halls."At least let me collect my-" "It has already been done for you my dear."

Monsieur Debienne accompanied me to my new room It seemed like a journey through a shadowy desert!But evinced,oddly,a great mistrust rather than sympathy. He held my elbow the whole way as if I were a prisoner. He seemed very nervous and out of sorts. When I demanded he tell me who was responsible for this,he was silent. I tried several approaches,to ferret the truth out of him,even this"Oh Sir! I hope you do not think ill of me,I am honorable I swear,I never mean to attract the favors of strangers... of men-" "What in Gods name are you prattling about young lady. This has nothing to do with your honor,Which is not my concern anyhow."

We made our way down a lighted corridor,where are four or five dressing rooms occupied by various luminaries,such as La Sorreli and Carolus. At the end of this,we turned the corner to another,narrower passage. It was dark,defined only by the trembling light of one lamp,a distant glow which illuminated virtually nothing but itself. Fortunately, my guide had a candle,so we were not completely lost.

The hall seemed to stretch into infinity,and my room was somewhere near the vanishing point of it,for it took so long to get there,I felt like throwing myself down unto the floor and sleeping where we were. I was already so weary,.and the draft sweeping the floor was draining the last of my stamina.

At last we came to a stop,at an elegant door recessed into the wall. It was tall,with a leaded glass transom at the top .It had etchings of some sort across it,but it was obscured. When he unlocked it and attempted to usher me in,I refused to turn around and greet the cavern of shadows awaiting me. I lost what composure I still had and grabbed his arm,clutching it desperately,clinging on for life. I probably left marks in his poor old skin !"Please please,Don't leave me alone here!Tell who ever sent me here,they have the wrong person... Please Monsieur,for the love of God,I am so afraid of the dark!"

The old man forcibly turned me to face the dreaded room, and to my amazement, It was ablaze with lights. So many,that I felt the collective heat from the interior, roll past me in a great shimmering golden wave. Candles,lamps,hanging lanterns,illuminating the room as if for a wedding.

As I stood gaping,I heard Monsieur Debienne say,very curtly"Goodnight miss Daae"I turned just to see the heavy door closing in my face. I turned again leaning,with my back against it.It was warm!I swear,right then,I needed something so solid to hold me upright,or I would have fallen through the floor!

I took in the details of the room little by little,as much as my sensibilities would allow at one time. What insane opulence! Surely it was a mistake. Who would there be in the world misguided enough to waste all this on me?.

The room is huge,and of odd construction. its perimeters are slightly asymmetrical, almost an octagon,but not quite a square. A very undecided shape indeed,yet not unpleasant. The ceiling is vaulted and painted in the same style as those in the main building,but without Gods,or deities, only a sapphire heaven,dotted with white clouds, rolling out forever. It is supported by carved mahogany pillars,which resemble fragile saplings,and do stretch into branches as they reach toward the ceiling. On one wall are two large Monet seascapes,and beneath them,a desk with pens and paper. In a shallow alcove toward my right,is a bed,draped in pale blue. In fact,the entire room is blue,the most gorgeous palette I have ever seen,from azure to midnight,all the natural hues of blue. Like any room,there is a tall dresser,a couch and a chair. There is a bathroom,All ivory and gold,with hot and cold running water,and a wardrobe. But it is not any of these things that are magnificent in themselves. It is the mirror!It covers one one wall entirely,from the floor to the ceiling,and reflects the entire grand room,giving an illusion of endless space.

I found all of my things laid out for me,and new things as well,luxuries I had only seen in the shop windows of the boulevards. Soaps and unctions,colognes and powder. Hair combs of ivory and tortoise shell and coral,gloves and a pair of gaitors,a picture book of the birds and flowers of France,a book of poetry,and so many other things,little things,but enough to fill an applecart.

The sheer abundance of these sundries,appearing in this strange room,made them unsavory to me. A lover might bring gifts such as these,but in modest incriments. I felt like I was the beneficiary of some unwholesome inheritance. I was not permitted to reject the room,and I forgave and excused myself for the coat by never wearing it,but these must go. I would put them in a box and in the morning confront Monsieur Debienne and tell him to return them to whatever hot headed misguided Romeo they came from... Still there is a little pang of grief as I gather them up,and sweep them out of my sight,knowing I might never have such fine things again in my life.

My white coat is stretched across the bed like a blanket. I lay on it and smell the forest and the snow again,and feel like weeping,I do weep. I don't know who this patron is who thinks so much of me,yet knows me so little,but it does not comfort me,it only frightens me. Now _it _ has cut me off from my only society,and the situation cannot get any better.. What Do they want? I shudder to think! I bury my face in the soft fur.It smells of earth and sap and twilight. I think of the little animals who once lived in it and made it warm,and I wish I had been born as such,with life brief and sweet and free.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**AUGUST 1875**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A week I have had this room now.I do not think I will ever adjust to it,and just as I predicted,it has made life so much worse. Here I am,enslaved in my tiny palace like a forsaken Princess,and hardly anyone will speak to me anymore,though they have no qualms about speaking_ of_ me,whispering and laughing while I am hardly out of hearing range.Since it seems they know more about my strange situation than I myself,and are so discourteously keeping it from me,I decided to obtain the facts by force. several evenings ago,before a performance of Hamlet, a gaggle of spiteful little wenches were gossiping in the dancers lounge, and as usual became very excited when they saw me enter. One of them in particular,I don't know her name,but she has not been here long, glanced back at me one too many times with her witches eyes. I grabbed her by her arm and shook her like a rag doll and demanded she share her privileged information,before I rattled her lying teeth out of her head.

Her eyes became as wide as saucers, her mouth dropped open and for a full minute no words would come out.. Then this; "Everyone knows,_everyone_ knows you are the favorite of Monsiuer Garnier.. and he has had that room built for you.. to-" I slapped her across her cold cheek before she could make a bigger fool of herself. "The architect!" I burst into uncontrollable laughter,and she tore herself away from me and ran for the shelter of a high backed chair. I was done. I threw my hands up,and walked out.I was still laughing. But I heard someone say.."Oh hearken Ophelia!...there she goes,beware your eyes ladies,she'll have those next"

I had imagined so many terrible things. .but this,this was preposterous. I barely even knew who Monsieur Garnier was. I had never even seen his face. What shape or shade of gossip could produce such a tableau. Oh,but how flattering that they had put me on such a pedestal. I am not just any kept mademoiselle,I am the _FAVORITE _ mistress of _the_ premier architect of all of France. And still I cry!

When I retired to my plutonian quarters that night,I found a note on my bureau. The bold script was hauntingly familiar.

"Bravo, sweet Ophelia,tonight you have brought down the house!

I dreamt that I was poor Ophelia,floating silently down the river.I was aware of the world going by me;the plants entangling my limbs,and the myriad of life darting and flowing around me.I was dissevered from all I had ever known, yet, it was not a mournful association. The river was warm as blood,and the reeds and grasses played in my hair like gentle fingers,and the little fishes swimming through me,under and over me,were silvery kisses. I fought not to awaken from this dream,just to float, until I sank into the deep everlasting embrace of the water.

Ah,But what awoke me? not the deathly chill of dawn,but music!It floated with me into consciousness , fading as it did,but it was there!I had heard it a hundred times, Chopins nocturne.. but never had I heard it played with such sweetness. In the stillness of the night,the distant violin cried till I thought _my_ heart would break. It brought forth from the darkness, memories I could not articulate. It drew me into full awareness,with those last high fluttering notes,and I stood straight up in the abysmal darkness,as if to follow the sound. Only the echo remained,but it seemed to be coming from the very walls around me.

My lamp had gone out,yet I was not afraid. There seemed to be a pale light faintly illuminating the surface of the giant mirror,and I saw my reflection,dwarfed by the cavernous room,and walked towards it,still feeling as if I were in a dream. I touched the glass,placed my my palms against my reflection,and I felt the whole enormous mirror vibrate,as a window does when a horse and carriage pass on the street. I drew back. My heart was pounding in my ears, but still I was not frightened,and in the pounding of my own heart,I swear I perceived a voice,Ah!the most beautiful,soft voice say."Do not fear,I will trouble you no more."

For the rest of the night I could not sleep. My soul felt like a tightly stretched cord,strung across the empty night,and trembling at the slightest provocation. I could not take my eyes from the mirror.I had a very disconcerting notion that the instant I turned my eyes away,my own dear father would somehow appear in it,or from it. Oh what terrible,mournful longing!

finally,as the first cold grey fingers of morning slipped over the transom,I gave in as if I'd been suddenly drugged.. I was going to feign illness to escape practice,but as it turned out,I was truly sick with a fever and an inflammation of the lungs.

Ten days gone by,and still I am no better. Though I have lucid moments here and there,in which I find the strength,and the mind to write. It is draining,but urgent,as it could be my last testimony on this earth.

The doctors come with their bitter potions and unctious remedies,and look solemn and shake their heads. And Now I am in danger of being sent back to Perros. They say I need the long rest,and the sea air will do me a world of good,but the truth is,I'm now a liability. What lasting worth has a chorus girl to begin with,and an one who is suddenly a chronic invalid,might well find herself exiled from the universe. I vomit blood and shiver constantly. I cry when I hear them talk of sending me home,and the effort makes my ribs ache so! If I die,I hope it is before they can take me from my room,and I hope once more I hear the sweet music of the invisible violin in the dark!

From death to elation! How do I tell it? I am well,in less than three days,and not only that,but Monsiuers Poligny and Debbiene have assured me that I will not be sent away,under any excuse... And I am sure they had some hand in the very queer circumstances of my rapid recovery. Not only am I well,I am better than I have been my entire life.

On a night when I was very very bad off,and a fever had my mind unhinged,imagining all sorts of dreadful things,I fell into a sleep which I was convinced was my last. I awoke,or thought I did,into a most distinct reality,but recognized nothing around me,and thought perhaps I had died.But what an odd heaven. Everything surrounding me was obscured in a soft muted light. I felt very warm,but not with fever,and someone was beside me. I couldn't see them at all. They remained in my peripheral vision, no matter I strained to get a full glimpse,a long dark shadow. ThenAnd still I could not see who it was!The figure slipped its arm under my back and lifted me up. Oh! my limbs were so heavy,and my head fell back but I could breathe freely for the first time in two weeks,and I sucked in the delicious sweet air in great ragged gasps. It made my heart throb dangerously for a moment,and then everything,breath,and pulse and thought found their rhythm again.

No sooner had I caught my breath,then a hand came round to my face,and touched a long,pale finger to my lips,wetting them with a strange,bittersweet anodyne. I felt soon,as if the world were a perfect paradise,and this arm,this mysterious cradle which held me just above death,was its creator.

The cool hand touched my forehead,and my eyelids. my mind sunk into a velvet darkness,and I knew no more.

I awoke in a veil of cold perspiration. The fever had broke left in its place a penetrating chill. I wanted to be warm. To swim in warm water,or soak in the sun until I melted. And what of the dream? It _was_ a dream to be sure,a brilliant hallucination,yet still I thought I could detect the faint bitterness of the elixir on my lips,and feel the lithe ghost of that powerful arm branded across my skin. But I make too much of it!..It was one of those mystical experiences common in extremis. I had left my body in its moment of truth,to visit things and ideas which were not real,and in the interim,free from the souls anxiety,it somehow recovered itself. A dream.. but all the same,after lighting my lamp,and creeping to the bath on trembling legs,I bolted the door firmly and pushed a shelf in front of it before undressing.

Everyone is being so kind!Well,the "Everyone" being limited to the some of the opera luminaries,and Debienne, an Poligny, But they have lavished on me enough attention to overwhelm a Queen. Twice each day,I'm bundled into a wheeled chair,and pushed around the courtyard like a baby in a pram.

In the morning,I sit for an hour or so in the sun,by the fountain, sharing my breakfast of cake and milk and fruit with Danea. The sun is so sweet and mellow,and Daneas Chatter often puts me to sleep,as I have nothing particularly engaging or relevant to add to the conversation. She talks of young men, rhapsodizing over the varieties to be encountered in the opera,verses those found in the streets and salons of Paris. This subject is about as fascinating to me as cold oatmeal. If one of those dandies she is so fond of ever tipped his hat to me,I would fill it full of laughter.

I am more attentive when she is reviewing our lessons,or the evenings performances. She tells me a number of dancers have recently become the victims of some rather malicious parlor tricks. I recognized the names-Alice, Berenice, Eunice, Charlotte, Simone,and Claira. Names which had been so bitter on my toungue just weeks ago during the siege of gossip,and hardly stirred an echo now. CharlotteI'm sure this was one of the girls in the lounge the night I fell ill Had somehow won the role of Desdemonas maid.She had a voice like an asthmatic calliope,but due to another illness,the managers were desperate. During the peak of her passionate finale with Desdemona,her wig,and slightly over sized headdress,levitated from her head inexplicably,and hovered for a time just above the set,while she tried desperately to catch it. By the time it vanished forever into the upper darkness,the audience was roaring with laughter,and the show was effectively over. No decent explanation was uncovered,and Charlotte herself was accused of sabotage,the reason being,a lingering gripe over creative control.

Alice and Simone were caught during a rather shameful liason with a stagehand,one was demoded socially,and the other drug home by her red faced mother. Berenice,partial to potions and fashionable elixirs, lost her flaxen hair,which had been the source of her overblown pride,after sampling a panacea sent to her as a gift. Eunice and Claira found their elegant wardrobes replaced by beggars clothes. I did not feel vindicated at their misfortunes. I thought of the old ghost story again,and it made me melancholy.. I was imagining what eternity would be like,condemned to the musty,everlasting night of the Opera with no recourse but tormenting empty headed chorus girls.

They ply me with so much rich food,I am in danger of becoming a cow before I can get back on my feet,but I am regaining my strength rapidly. I have been appointed a personal teacher for the time I am convalescing,but she has absolutely no cunning with weak and ungainly things such as I am now. She is stern and boring!In the evening, after everyone else has retired, Danea and myself make the lounge our personal studio. She is a much better teacher,although her attempts to be stern and ugly make me laugh. She knows the dances because she lives them, fresh every night, not a hundred years ago. Just as song is with me, at the dawn of each day the dance is still vital to her as the breath in her body.

**SEPTEMBER 1875**

The last few precious days of summer have come. I am completely recovered now,but have not yet been back on stage. I've discovered a world of my own,seperate from everything,on the roof of the Opera. I avoid my stuffy room when I can. It doesn't do my mind any good to sit alone for hours with that imposing mirror, my insipid reflection my only company. Strange,how it has changed for me. The hours and days I spent there,languishing with fever and delerium tainted it forever,yet I love it more because I have heard magic sound through its walls,and the music is connected with something deep in my soul. And in dreams,I still feel my weight as it was,balanced in the cradle of that deft,cool arm.

Coming here,I imagine myself ascending to heaven,like Beatrix. Farthest below,in the part of the opera I dare not go,are the nine circles of hell,where black demons shovel coal eternally into the enormous fiery mouths of iron furnaces, keeping the circles turning,like gigantic gears. Above, there is the limbo world of the theatre, where all souls are judged in the blaze of the footlights,then,up,and up and higher through the twisting labrynthine forest and the false night. Here,strange frightening faces appear out of the blackness,then vanish,and darkness leaps and cowers at its own shadow. Doors to strange rooms open and close by themselves,and disembodied spirits of music float in the rafters. Once I reach the roof,I am safe,and as close to God as I will ever need to be,looking down on the lights of Paris shining like a sea of fallen stars.

In my rare moods of solitude,high above the world,with golden Apollo and his lyre of love my only company,I can indulge or meditate,on my oldest desire.

Like everything else In my early life,it is vague,but somewhere I know that my soul sacrificed itself for song. I remember from the time I could speak my first words,a trancendence when my mind and my body were alive with music,with my own voice creating melody. I underwent a metamorphosis that can only be compared to the spirit leaving the prison of the body. But after my first illness,the ability,if I ever truly possessed it,vanished cruelly,though the desire remained as glorious as ever. I am an instrument, but a useless one.

What will become of me?I haven't the physical skill and grace which would one day make me a great dancer,my passion does not run in the vain of acting. I am too timid. I was born to sing, but I cannot reconcile this fire with the artless demon in my throat. Ah me! so I come here to my stone heaven and comfort myself with the echoes of what was. I sing,With all my heart ,and hope that desire will meet with reason and unlock my voice again. Reason tells desire why my lower register is swampy,my middle is flat,and my upper shrill,and desire bows graciously and concedes that she will step aside briefly if reason will be so kind as to remedy the loss with fresh skills. But alas,when will those two ever meet,it is the rule of the universe that one must always repel the other.

Tonight,in an abject moment of loneliness,I sat beneath Apollo and sang marble halls,because I remember Papa singing it,and the memory was comforting;

'I had wealth too great to count

and a fine ancestral name,

But I also dreamt

which pleased me more,that you loved me just the same

That you loved me,you loved me the same..'

Halfway through my poor song,I had that strange,intimate sensation of being watched again,but it passed so quickly this time,I could hardly believe it was ever there. It was not as foreboding as on the night of 'Der vampire',on the contrary,it was reassuring,like the presence of an old friend. As I continued ,I felt as if I _was _ singing to a receptive audience,I could _feel _someone listening,no longer watching,only listening. I was not self conscious in the least. Reveling in this experience,I chose yet another song, ' the joys of love'

'Your eyes kissed mine

I saw the love in them shine

You brought me heaven right then

when your eyes kissed mine

Miraculously,though I was yet a thousand years from the perfection of sound,I suddenly felt my voice,as it should be,like pure warmth in my chest and my throat. The rapture pulled me to my feet,and there was nothing but the stars below and the stars above... Ah nothing can wreck this happiness. I sit now,writing in my insular room,and the painted sky seems so much brighter. It seems real,as if I could fly up and into it,and the little forest of saplings dances beneath it.. and the mirror... well,it is silent,as all mirrors.

Today I felt the first chill of autumn touch Paris. I was on the roof, in the shadow of Apollo,gazing down at the tessellated landscape stained gold with afternoon light, and all at once the warmth was swept away in a howling gust of wind. It brought with it a little dark cloud which hovered just in front of the sun and made the land,and sky a uniform grey. Without shadows,the world below became a flat depthless tableau of lifeless shapes and figures,like city of paper dolls.

I have been practicing diligently for a week now,trying to discipline my voice,but it is nearly impossible when I have no direction. Passion is certainly fickle..I try to see it as a magic carpet that will take me back to the glorious heights of my greatest abilities,and too often it sails away without me.Still,I have thrown myself into it with joyous abandon,and have come out perceptibly better.I avoid the little chansons and ballads which do not challenge my voice,and torture it into obedience with Mozart,and Verdi. Ah,the masters might toss in their graves to hear me croak,and croak again their legacies!

The cold wind seemed to take all my inspiration with it,and I dared not stay out in it,for fear of another attack of fever.

I was climbing down the ribcage of the timber skeleton,when who should I see coming up,but Mateil. He had been very much lost in his own thoughts,because he stepped back quickly in surprise when he noticed me. It set the whole narrow apparatus of the stairs to swaying,and like a fool I grabbed his arm to steady myself,as if this would save me from crashing into the abyss should the structure decide to give way.

I recovered my dignity, apologizing and offering the most careful obeisance as I passed,but to my surprise,I heard him call behind me."Wait!..mademoiselle,where are you off too? Do not hurry away."I felt the blood rush to my face,and knew it must be red as an apple,so I kept my head turned away as I stammered my answer."I was only going to the dancers lounge.." "Will They miss you if you are delayed?" "Sir?"..."Your companions.. will they be waiting?" "no,they won't...I mean,there is no one." He looked at me as if he did not believe me at all. Danea sometimes glances at me this way when I tell her I have no idea from where the lovely roses come after a performance,or who might favor me enough to install me in that lavish room .He, Mateil could not possibly know any of these things unless he listened to idle gossip,and I didn't picture someone of his standing in the theatre wasting time on such things.

"And I as well,am free of.. obligation-would it be presumptuous of me,little mademoiselle,to think you might benefit from an hour of good company. I know that I am a stranger,but I so humbly ensure that given this time,we will seem like old friends!" and then he took a sweeping,dramatic bow,which set the stairs in motion once again,and I was laughing despite the uncertainty of the world beneath my feet.

So he gave me his coat, we went back to the roof,which I was to discover, was also Mateils paradise. I thought this was strange,since he lived elsewhere,and was not bound as I was to the environs of the opera. He could have chose his heaven from any location in Paris,yet he favored the imposing,tomblike battlements overlooking the city in eternal silence.

Mateil is only twenty two,but there might as well be a lifetime between our ages. At fifteen., the living world has already made us women and men. But in the painted world of the theatre, we are no better than rats skittering and dodging in the footlights,no matter how many grand ambitions we harbor. By Mateils age,we have lived,and gained the accolades of an entire lifespan,no longer existing under the same false sun as the little fluttering ballerinas and shrill chorus girls. Mateil says We are all like little candle flames,only such a brief time before the tallow spends itself and we are gone. I wish that I could win immortality,be free from the mortal coil,fly into heaven like a star and burn forever!

I do not feel this distance with Mateil.He is so unlike anyone,

1 find it hard to put into words. I was instantly at ease with him,but then,How am I supposed to feel?How many blushes,sighs and sidelong glances do we tally before admitting we are in love..so far,I have counted mine on one hand, and not one on the other side!and yet I feel such an abiding affection for him.

All logic tells me I should be smitten. I believed it the night we collided in the hallway,flustered by such an abrupt awareness of self and physche Often since then,I have dared to admire him from a distance,for he is very beautiful,and this is never so exquisitely apparent as when he is singing.Oh!but if it is love,it is not what they say. I do not feel ill,or lightheaded,to watch him perform,and then to speak and hear the echo of the terrible Lord Ruthven,or the prince of Denmark,lifts my soul,till I am so very near the heaven of music I dream of. Then he stops,and I fall from the stars.He says I have a strong voice,and with proper training I could easily master Aida,or Rosamunde. Even I know this is an indifferent bit of flattery on his part,like a harried parent dismissing a child. Oh yes,with my manic vocals,challenging steps too breathtakingly high,then leaping from them into thin air or unyeilding pavement,A few lessons,and I would be mastering the gravity of my voice to beat all prima donnas.

I asked Mateil then,he he himself might not teach me,and instantly I was sorry,for then I begin to understand the nature of his cynical replies whenever we talk of music directly. He says he has grown weary of the opera,perhaps weary of singing entirely."Week by week" He cries,with his hands waving helplessly in the air "the soul of it slips away,until I can't recall what drew me here in the first place,It ebbs away,like night being swallowed by the horizon,and takes me with it. I once taught my self a trick to overcome a fear of the stage,to imagine the audience as a fantastic illusion,just as the stage and scenery behind me. Now this illusion is all I see. The audience is nothing to me but a crowd of implacable guignols, incapable of responding to any emotion!and evening upon evening they sit staring with glassy eyes waiting to be fed the same stagnant fare!".I was crushed by this confession. I stared at this nearly perfect man,with his beautiful long mouth,curved at the corners with tenderness and humor,as if it had been carved by god himself,to be the instrument of song,his eyes,clear and brilliant,intense in their frame of dark lashes,his strong nose and fine,wide cheekbones..it was a face one could read from the moon! I looked and looked and could not comprehend his sentiments,Ah! If I had such a face,instead of the pale half rendered watercolor that is mine,and the effortless genius of song, would I languish in such discontent? "No,dear Christine" He was resigned,sad,but decisive none the less."I am no teacher.following the voice which comes from my soul you would be hopelessly lost,you'd do just as well to hear a gypsy violin in the dark of the night and ask it to light your way to heaven.

For propreties sake,we keep our friendship a secret, on the roof,only Apollo and the sky know what we say,and they are never jealous,or petty.Yet,I seem to have attained a new status within my circle. No longer do the whispers and the burning stares follow me.In truth,my contemporaries are no longer either cruel or kind. I've become as indistinguishable as a drop of water in a troubled sea.

I believe Matiels abssymal sentiments toward his craft are beggining to effect me.I love the theatre almost as much as I loved papa. I would rather be a clumsy chorus girl forever,than a great prima donna whose worn throat makes her retire before she is thirty A recluse,in her jewels and feathers and tin crown,far far away from the smoke and lights, where winter can change to spring on command,and little toads like me can become queens beneath a single coat of greasepaint.

Even on the dreary mornings,when we all must stand in a line and have our knees snapped at by the old ballet mistresses leather switch. 'Allonge! En face' little horses! Weak hearts must be loved,weak knees must be punished! She can beat my knees until they bleed, It wont make me a ballerina. My body refuses to obey the stringent rules of movement this dance demands. Even on those mornings,I will force myself to smile and look dedicated,because I _am_ happy to be here,and I know someday,my voice will soar through these halls where my feet can only stumble. That is to say,it is my fondest wish sing here forever,but lately I am restless.

Yesterday I yawned one too many times during rehearsals for Oberon,and Danea stuck her scarf in my mouth to be funny.But I was in a bad temper.I tore it and threw it out the window.I made her cry and I am sorry for that.I feigned illness just to get away,to wait for Matiel on the roof.But He never came.I was not too terribly disappointed,he is not always there.There is some place he sneaks off too,and will never tell me. Naturally,I would never think to meddle in the private affairs of my colleagues,but he teases me with it incessantly,as if he wants me to illicit a confession. A little dishonest. It makes me want to know what he is up to all the less. But there are times when,after these excursions,he seems so melancholy I feel I must question him,if only to know better how to comfort him,as I would any friend He is more reticent than ever on these occasions.

To my surprise,it was Danae who found me,daydreaming in Apollos watery Autumn shadow. She wasn't angry with me. She forgave me readily for the ruined scarf,offering that it was an ugly gift,from an even uglier suitor,and she was well rid of it."And you would forsake his kindness just because he is ugly?" I asked,trying to turn my ill humor into an honest query,as it was unlike her to make such cruel distinctions. "Christine" She laughed,"You do me a disservice!No,my paramours ugliness is disguised well within a magnificent vessal..Oh if only he were a faithful dog,or even a gargoyle ,I would love him and have no complaint. as long as he possessed a gentle soul..And what of your handsome protege?Why are you so alone up here when he might be waiting somewhere for you?" There was a strange gravity in the tone of her question. It compelled my curiosity, yet frightened me into verbal prudence. "He is never waiting for me. We meet up here by happy accident,and he does not tell me where he goes otherwise.""Oh if only we were all so accident prone!..Tell me,do you love him Christine?" Again,that worrisome tone in her voice. I wanted to shake her! "Love him!What is love Danea? Do you know any better than me? I love the ground he walks on, and the sky he walks under ,and will love them the same when he has passed by them!and if you do not love your cruel beaux why did you cry when I tore his scarf?".."because I do love him Christine!and it made me think of how he has torn _me_,and thrown _me _into a pit of despair!"..All I know of love is this,it is never what it advertises,and will only reveal itself blood after you have bought it with your soul!"

I saw her dash a tear from her eye. She was so removed from her usual lighthearted self it frightened me. Why in this state of mind did she seek me out after I had offended her? I put my arm around her poor shoulder,and let her cry out the rest of her tears. It was the least I could do after stirring up such trouble.

She soon recovered,letting herself indulge in silent though for a few minutes as she paced back and forth,then she sat across from me,and took my hands in hers,and she was her sweet self once more,though a shadow still lingered over her shoulder.

"Christine,I see great things for you.. I dreamt the other night that we were being chased by an enormous dark cloud. There was something very ominous about it,it wasn't just a rain cloud,it had a magical thunderous voice,but I couldn't make out the words. Suddenly you stopped,you refused to go any farther,no matter how I coaxed and yelled,and then the cloud came over you,and you fell on your knees in a sort of rapture,as if you were hearing the the cloud speak to you,and all at once I wasn't afraid for you anymore cloud turned into silver rain,and came down all around you ,and I knew somehow this meant you would ascend to the greatest heights in your life,that you would have everything,and above all you would know the greatest love... But take heed Christine,take care to keep your soul..." "Never fear,No one in _this _ world will ever have my soul Danea,unless his body is a staff,and his heart is a violin! "well,I wish you joy of your fantastical lover.. I'd be content with one of kind flesh and temperate blood."

Ah, Tytiana is such a wonderful role to play,she is so lovely,and I manage it well without getting tangled up in my feet. I have been givin this part without explanation.. Any one is more qualified than me,and of course I am quite noticible,but Tytania,she is mute,completely mute! There I am ,center stage,and I can't sing a word,I must rely on my treacherous body to charm the audience. But then,opposite Matiel,listening to King Oberons song,I _am_ Tytania, there are no issues for clumsy Christine. We are the rulers of the summer night,we weave and unweave the dreams of all lovers,of the audience.

Still,it puzzles me,how this came about. I have been confident enough in my voice this last month,to finally put it to the test. I worked up a great deal of nerve,everything in my reserve,and requested a meeting with Monsieurs, Debienne and Poligny,and the chorus master,to show them how I had progressed. I stood In front of my little audience and sang Ophelias aria

' a gentle oath binds us

he gave me his heart,in exchange for mine

and if they tell you

That it leaves me and forgets me,do not believe a word!

No! Hamlet is my husband

It is me,it is me,I am Ophelia'

The response was better than I could have hoped, and the chorus master was pleasantly speechless."My dear!"Said Poligny, it is a grievous error that you have entered the conservatory as a dancer,..well unless of course ,well. I mean,unless it was the _specific ,the dearest _ wish of your benefactor".. and he blundered his way out of his offhand compliment,attempting to remedy the injury by offering me a pillaged box of chocolates just handy on the table to his left,"Sugar keeps the throat golden.. so I've heard he looked furtively toward the stoic chorus master I mean my dear,how does such a voice go overlooked? Why haven't we heard this until now? You must have a teacher right away. Monsieur Debienne stayed uncomfortably silent through the entire meeting,I don't know why,I had not seen him so uneasy since the night he escorted me to my room. I didn't care,he could frown and fidget all he wanted,he couldn't douse my happiness. I would have a personal vocal teacher,and would be allowed small singing roles in the mean time. Then this,I am thrust into the spotlight as a mute!.No one has offered me a word of explanation,and do I complain? I wouldn't have the spleen! Perhaps I am just too stupid to see when I am being humored, or being made a sport of.. But then,I do love being Tytania,and the proximity to Matiel it affords me,while we are in our element,and not agonizing over aimless griefs on the rooftop.

It is barely dawn now,but I can't sleep. Sometimes I think this room is haunted,but it is not my father,and not entirely benevolent whatever it is. Yet, I'm as acquainted with it as I am my own reflection in the giant mirror.

Last night,as soon as I entered,I went to the glass and was conducting a rare study ,trying to see myself in a new light. Someday Matiel and I will sing the duet from Otelo and raise the audience in riotous applause!..Ah,but I am such a little toad,who would love me? I thought of Matiel and it made me blush so. I touched the chain that hangs down my neck,then quickly seized in my fingers,the little cross which lives on it ,my fathers crucifix,and kissed it. All at once a cool wind came from nowhere and swirled around the room,blowing out the lamps one by one,until I stood helplessly in the dark.

I can hardly explain what happened then. I wasn't afraid. The flush accompanying my present,private thoughts,was deepened ten fold,and the room was suddenly as warm and sultry as summer. As Daneas dream prophesied,I fell on my knees in front of the mirror in a sort of trance. I could feel my own body acutely as if someone,or something were watching me,and in my senseless state,it was not objectionable. I was in a rapture like I had never felt before,And then,through the thrumming of my own pulse,like before,I heard,I thought I heard,a voice,oh the most beautiful, insiduous, soft and sonorous voice,singing,calling my name. Was it man or woman? It was neither,but it made my soul shiver like a bell. Bells bells ringing through the night,molten and sweet,and my whole body ached with the sound. I think it put me out of my head.I must have fainted.I woke in my own bed,but I do not remember walking there.

Sitting here in the uncertain light of my one little candle,I feel a strange absence,as is if something has just left me completely,and forever,but what,what! I suddenly want the comfort of Mama Valerius again. To lay my head on her jolly bosom and sleep in forgetful innocence. What is the use of such desires,When all of that is so hopelessly distant.

I close my eyes,trying to recreate Perros in my imagination,but I can't get there. Instead,I am flying,breathless over the still dark streets of Paris. The wind is delicious on my face and bare arms,and I can feel and see everything.

I am following. Following the path of someone,or something who is headed there,to the sea.I can smell the ocean already. Though I cannot see who it is below me in the dark,My outstretched arms,my wings,are guided by,and at one with their every move.. we are graceful, fluid,a swift,formless current through the slow sea of the night, and I am free,beautifully free.


	3. Christines testimonial October 1875

This is sort of turning into a serial. Bear with me anyone reading,I swear,its going somewhere!

This part, Christine's early journal,is pretty long,so I have decided to break the months up into chapters.

OCTOBER 1875

Amazing that life could change so drastically given only three short weeks. I have not even thought to write until now. Ever since the night I fainted in front of the mirror,this room has not been the same. It is more like a tomb than a sanctuary,and the emptiness echoes with a deafening knell. How could a lonely,distant room suddenly seem lonelier,and ever more remote?The painted ceiling looks like rain,and the trees less like fresh saplings and more like a dead winter forest.

Sometimes at night,I stand on tiptoe,with my ear and my body pressed against the cool glass of the mirror,and listen for the magic violin. for that _voice_,that angelic clarion I'm not certain I ever really heard. Was it only an echo in my soul,of the past,of my father? I strain my senses in vain,rewarded only with the most fathomless silence,and a terrible sadness. I do not want to be sad.

Quite by accident, Mateil, Danea and I have become a fast trio. We are now performing,twice a week,some novel new opera,a fantasy piece called,of all things,the beggar maid of Maromee'. It is the sad story of a young girl who,while she is the most beautiful singer,is poor,and goes unnoticed. With the help of a mysterious benefactor though,she is soon elevated to the greatest heights. Riches,fame,beauty,and love,are all hers,the only condition being,she never attempt to discover his identity. All is well until she falls in love with her mysterious Saviour, and schemes to reveal him. When he disappears forever,she is destroyed,and wastes away,spending her days and nights wandering the wilderness,singing to her vanished love,and soon there is nothing left of her but her lovely voice.

This is a very melancholy play indeed! and what is more intriguing,is that it appears to have no composer!I mean,it is not known,or knowable according to the staff who the artist is.It was a private acquisition. Well he is certainly a frenchman, whoever he is,who else would think to choose such a singular location? I believe it is a nondescript village,quite near Rouen, where Joan of arc was burned.

There are only three main roles;Trylia, the little singer,Boris,her suffering lover,who tries to save her ,and a rather treacherous character, psyche, representing Trylia's conscience. Perhaps because it is an uncertain endevour, these three roles have been given to myself. Trylia, Danea, psyche,and Mateil, Boris. The mysterious benefactor,who Trylia dubs"Gabriel" because she thinks he is an angel,is of course,never seen. He communicates with her only in darkness,in the forest behind her home,so Mateil, with the wonderful skill of changing the timbre of his voice,has also been givin this role. Psyche is the most interesting. The role is completely silent,her discourse with Trylia is conveyed completely in movement,in dances,and though,at least to us,this is something completely new and modern,Danea has mastered it beautifully,as if this type of dance was created for her. It isn't so much a ballet as it is making the body speak what is in the heart. It is without any of the constraints or rules of ballet, free form,and quite liberatingas Danea saysThere are a myriad of other nameless characters,hosts of shades and sprites and expendables,occupied by chorus girls and actors,and this soft,expressive new dance has been incorporated as well into their scenes. I find this character perfect for my voice, for hers,Trylia's voice,is a voice in constant transition,as my own,so my flaws are Trylia's flaws. At times,performing though,my imagination runs away with me,and I have an eerie sense of familiarity with my own odd experiences,the notes,the flowers,and the haunting,haunting music,all of which are completely gone now. I know that was just fog in my head for the most part,and the other,my gift giving Romeo has found a more receptive lover.

Despite its ambiguous heritage,the little play is a pleasing success,and I suppose this is what has drawn the three of us so tightly together. I will cover this presently,but first there is an occurrence I must mention in passing,before I can continue.

Typically,our leisure evenings,when we aren't exhausted,find us,that is, Danea and I, in an alcove,or some other fabricated sanctuary deep in the pink marble palace, playing whist or gin,or the occasional round of bawdy charades. due our fairly limited society,our stock of characters consists mainly of theater people,and it gets tedious trying to reinvent them over and over. When these amusements are spent,we often take up another,more daring sport,running through the caverns of the deserted opera.

Initially,we were quite cautious about this,and would only venture into certain places, just out of our normal habitat. The annexes and dark hallways below the main floor,the music rooms,the salon,and the stables outside. Knowing how Monsieur _managers _patrol these realms after hours,we always had an excuse ready,but we never encountered anyone,and eventually,this emboldened us so much,that we were sneaking out in the dead of night.

My habit has always been to fasten the door of my room tight after I have gone in, not against prowlers,but against my own curiosity. This is a very queer foible, I know,but where the room itself once intimidated and frightened me,now it is the immediate without that scares me. I would never dare,for any reason,re open my door onto the black,dusty hallway,after I have committed myself to the sanctuary for the night,for I have a notion,as ridiculous as it may seem,that if I did,I would be greeted by an incredible abyss,a fathomless,murky cosmos of burning stars and shifting,formless monsters. A great inescapable vacuum of endless space,waiting to swallow me. There for,it seems to have revealed,or added a whole new aspect to my character,that lately I have been able to overcome this for the sake of our midnight excursions.

I was alarmed the first night Danea braved the serpentine hallway to tap on my door. It was an eerie sound in the stillness,and I felt rather like the hapless lover in 'The raven' being croaked at by the demon bird. Although I knew better ,I stood frozen in fear,until I heard my poor companion scold me from the other side.

Though we have been friends nearly eight months,she had yet to see the little palace I lived in. Because of the strange nature of my feelings toward it,always sensing that it is a living,watching,thinking entity, rather than simply a glorified dressing room,I am never at ease with the idea of having guests,or holding any sort of meetings here,however brief. It is a jealous sanctuary,and I suspect I am an equally jealous ward.

The instant Danea beheld the interior,she was awestruck,like a child at her first party. It seemed,as the fantastic mirror was the first object her gaze lit on,that she was not simply amazed,but terribly baffled,for it is not so much a looking glass,as it is the purveyor of fantastic illusions,and it must have appeared to her,as it did to me the first night, that herself, all at once so small,was standing on the verge of an improbable,alien world.

Though we are treated everyday to the illusions of the theater,and the marvels of Garnier's grand vision towering in gold and bronze and crystal,my room is apart,and unique even from these,For despite it's opulence, it conveys an immediate and overwhelming sense of the soul,and all things just out of sight beyond the material world.

"Christine"She whispered,as if she had suddenly forgotten how to speak.''It's-It's paradise" Her gaze had wandered to the painted ceiling,the sounding sky with its fleece of clouds,and I knew she was thinking ,or feeling past all the airy luxury surrounding her.''Its no wonder they didn't believe..."and she stopped,coming around again,I suppose,with an sense of indiscretion at resurrecting a hideous rumor. ''Oh Christine,you _must_ have a guardian angel!" And she went about the room ,without waiting for an invitation,picking up objects and and marveling over textures and shapes and colors.''If I had an angel,I wouldn't ask for such foolish things..with so much in the world to dream of!..No,I have no guiding spirit,just a deluded admirer with too much money and too much imagination." ''You always manage to take the magic out of everything,Christine." ''And you always manage to fabricate it out of nothing"This was threatening to turn into an argument,the sort we had many times,for she was always accusing me of being 'old' 'tight laced' 'Stuffy' When I refused to partake in some juvenile amusement with her,or encourage her outrageous experiments with 'spiritualism' which no less than a dangerous craze.

Her attention was now fully captured by the mirror,quite suddenly,and she stood, poised,transfixed,with the world turned backwards around her. She seemed drawn to her own small curious image,which looked particularly fey in the silvery fathoms of the strange glass.Then she did,exactly what I have done a dozen times,rising on tiptoe and stretching her arms across the surface,embracing her own reflection.

I was anxious to get out of the room,and so was on the verge of crashing her reverie by complaining,that she would smudge the glass,or scratch it with her jewelry,when she abruptly let out a little scream and raced back to me,across the room.''Christine" She gasped,clinging on to my shoulder.''Christine..the mirror,it..it moved! I felt the whole enormous thing turn beneath me,and I felt as if I were falling..and there was a draft-'' I pushed her off impatiently.''You are certainly imagining things now Danea. Perhaps these late nights are not good for either one of us.''As always" she said,with an undertone of bitterness ''You don't believe me..well go and try for yourself,and see if you don't fall in!" ''I've done so countless times,and felt nothing''Then it came back to me,very succinctly,the night the mirror had thrummed beneath my touch like a living thing,and felt all at once,an overwhelming and unreasonable sense of trepidation,envy and wonder. My heart was racing,I could hear the drum in my ears.I tried to compose myself for both our sakes.''I'm sorry Danea. lets please not quarrel. I believe you,but perhaps it is just something come loose. It may be a hazard,we will tell Monsieur Debienne tomorrow." ''Yes..tomorrow'' She echoed,sounding very far off,her wide eyes still fixed on the mirror.''Tomorrow''

The night was to become far stranger yet. We were more daring than ever before,infiltrating depths of the great structure whose existence we had never dreamed of. Danea had somehow procured a set of keys which opened a series of odd rooms,whose treasures lured us,before we realized it,far far down into the building.

There were several rooms full of artwork,some of which,we recognized even by the feeble glow of our lamp as Latour, Delacroix,Manet,and Rossetti.. I have a particular fondness for Rossetti,with his beautiful hands and pensive eyes. Beyond these,were equally exquisite,but obscure works,landscapes,ancient statuary,strange sculptures,and a collection of portraits which had been liberated from their frames and were rolled up in a dusty corner.

Danea had settled on the floor,and was methodically unrolling each large canvas,using the her knee and the lamp to secure them. I moved a Rossetti nearer to her station,to share the stingy light. I believe it was a painting of Elizabeth,his wife,as she appears in so much of his work,her head bent with melancholy,and her red hair almost hiding her sorrowful blue green eyes. I was rather lost in this image,ruminating over the strange tale I'd often heard about,how in his deep grief over her early death,Monsieur Rossetti had buried his poetry with her,and then,years later,robbed her grave to get it back,believing her ghost had come to him and told him to do so. A very strange legend indeed,especially since now,the world may read these poems. Oh fame!

While in my morbid reverie,I was only vaguely aware of of Daneas oohs,and ahhs,and other exclamations of wonder,engineered to draw me out,and to whatever she was looking at. At last she was insistent,and shook me by the arm.''Christine..look at these,I have never seen anything like them!" I wished then,with all my heart,that we had a better light,for I still am not certain if what I saw was real,or only a trick of darkness and wishful thinking.

There were several landscapes,or rather seascapes,and in the swirling,violent,passionate dynamic

of color and texture,I recognized the mauve granite and bright gray green horizon of Perros.Within the tumult,were distant figures,rendered only enough to tell that they were a man and child,looking out at the ocean. In one,the child was alone,bent in the act of gathering shells,her hair and boyish clothes in disarray from the wind. In another,the man was alone,also caught by the wind,but so intent on the playing of a violin, he was unaware of his hat floating away on the tide. I felt that wind,as if I were standing there.I cannot describe the ache of recognition and longing! I strained my eyes to see the detail of the figure. A memory,just out of my grasp haunted me,my fathers beloved violin singing with the sea,strange hours among the rocks,alone.

Sometimes when I see a thing,a place,an image,which sparks the past,and I find myself trying to

recover lost memories,almost unconsciously,I am rewarded with blinding headaches,and I must lay in a dark room for days with my eyes covered. I felt this now,and yet,the image though elusive,was comforting.''Who could have painted this?''I whispered,half to Danea, and half to myself,there was no mark or signature anywhere.''Perhaps he was some tragic figure who simply wanted to remain unknown.. you know how artists are..very neurotic..''Oh no! Whoever he was,he was a genius Danea,a lover!" ''A lover of what Christine? it _is_ very compelling,I do not like pictures where peoples faces are hidden..it is unsettling.'' ''Maybe to you,but I recognize this place..it is Perros,where I grew up..." ''Have you grown up Christine?'' she asked,with mock surprise,holding the lamp up closely to my face.''Heaven forbid!'' And she laughed,rolling the paintings away,and working to unveil another.

At the sight of this next,revealed in the throbbing glow of the lamp,we both gasped. It was in the same style as the others,yet ever more violent,and the colors,glaring and discordant. The entire canvas was covered with the distorted,twisted,leering visage of a monster,with eyes that seemed to at once,look through us,and beyond the world,and inward. They seemed to pin us against the darkness like doomed moths,so we were frozen. Danea tried to say something''Oh..Christine..its, its _hideous_ and yet...'' Then she was speechless. Suddenly,something we had disturbed earlier,came crashing down from above,and we both screamed. We did not stay to see what it was,or even replace anything,we simply fled,slamming the door behind us.

We ran blindly for a good minute,as if the creature from the picture were right behind us. But soon we realized our folly,and collapsed on the floor,laughing like lunatics at our own stupidity.

When we came around we saw we had lit at the cavernous mouth of a previously undiscovered staircase,leading even farther down into the building. With our fatal resilience in hand,barely ten minutes distant from the trauma of the storage room,we were daring each other to descend. Even though,when we held the lantern up,its frail light revealed nothing but hungry darkness.

We crept down,step by step,clinging on to each other,with our backs sliding against the cold wall, and it seemed to take an eternity .I knew we moving down an extremely steep,winding staircase,deep into the cellars of the opera,for the air became damp,and chillier with every turn.

At last,we reached the bottom. It opened up onto a series of cavernous rooms,with the ceilings held up by stone columns,rather than marble. The queerest thing was,that we could see the rooms as clear as day,because there were torches on the pillars,and they were lit.

''Stranger,and stranger still" Danea commented indifferently.''Just what sort of intrigues do you think our good managers are up to,that they must have this dungeon lit up like a play?" "perhaps it is just that" I offered. I was beginning to feel a little giddy. ''And they fight like old cats over who will play Marguerite." "And who is the winner?"Asked my companion,attempting to hold back her laughter,by sucking in her breath. ''Oh it is certainly Monsieur Poligny, with his skinny frame and nervous twitches,ah,can you see it Danea!'' And I stood,mincingly,in front of one of the great pillars,as if it were a mirror,and sang in a ridiculous voice,while twirling Poligny's 'Mustache' and my skirt;

'Ah!I laugh to see myself

So beautiful in this mirror

Is it you Marguerite,is it you?

Answer me

Respond,respond quickly!

No no,it is no longer me

Tis the face of Monsieur Poligny!'

We both dissolved into peals of laughter,they could have heard out on the sleeping streets of the city.

At last,we regained our composure,with only the occasional hiccup,but Danea whispered ''Listen Christine. we are laughing still.'' She meant,our echoes,rebounding through the stone darkness,but as I listened,I imagined we must be in some sort of extraordinary acoustic chamber,built much as the stage of the opera,to amplify and hold all sound,for I could really hear our voices, as if they were just speaking, laughing, moving ahead of us in the shadows.''Come Christine!'' She insisted.''It is said,that if you can follow your echo to its end,you will find your fortune.'' ''Oh Danea! Is your stock of superstitions endless! What if I don't want to find my fortune?'' ''Nonsense,who doesn't want to know what lies in store'?'' ''And what if it is no fortune at all,but something bad?'' ''Have faith Christine,remember,I have dreamt wonderful things for you, don't cower from your own voice!''

Following ones echo is a singular sport,and I will admit,I was much less apprehensive than intrigued. Our voices went here and there,east,then west,seemingly independent of us, as if they were indeed leading us somewhere,beckoning us ever deeper into the opera. We followed through passageways,shallow stairwells,small rooms and huge rooms,ever more damp and dark. Until, we were stopped abruptly at the edge of an abyss,where our echoes fell,disappearing forever into an unbreachable blackness.

We stood for a long,uncertain time,trying to discern just where we were. A powerful draft, bone chilling and dank,rushed upward through the dark,making us shiver in its grasp. Eventually,with the aid of the lamp,our eyes adjusted just enough to see,that we were at the top of some manner of monstrous staircase,Though It could hardly be called that. It more closely resembled the inside of a bottomless well,with a spiral of stones,serving as steps,leading down into oblivion. I can never imagine,even in my most outrageous dreams,what is the purpose,or thought behind the creation of such a structure,and here,beneath this beautiful golden palace of light..it was like finding a monsters heart enfolded in the wings of an angel.

Neither of us could say a word. We stood,absolutely transfixed,as hopeless as little birds caught in a cobras gaze. Subtly,oh so imperceptibly,and I shall never forget it if I live to be a hundred,we heard weeping. It was borne up on the current, from the unimaginable depths,as if it were inherent to the wind and the darkness, the deepest,most penitent sobbing I have ever heard. It wrenched my heart and my spirit so powerfully that I gasped, yet the harder I listened the more indistinct it became. I felt tears burning my eyes and my soul seemed apart from me. Danea, her feelings very much in sympathy with mine,put a sheltering arm around my shoulder,and we clung to each other for life,caught by that mournful tune,unable to move.

Danea at last rescued us,for once being the more level headed,but I suspect she hardly believed her own words.''Christine..it is only the wind.'' ''And the wind has a broken heart!"

Two weeks passed,and we spent little time in the building,or the grounds of the opera,unless we are rehearsing,performing,or sleeping. We both felt very strange after the events in the cellars,and evolved a habit of clinging on to each other like two children lost in the woods. If we were anywhere in the opera,we were together,Danea and myself. She claimed to be having atrocious dreams,which left her too tired in the morning to work,and,though I kept mute,knowing better than to encourage her,I was dreaming strange things as well.

She would come to my room,down the winding hallway,night after night,saying that she was in danger of causing a riot in the dormitories because of her somnambulistic outbursts.I let her stay of course,but it did nothing to abate her nightmares,or mine.

We would wake,sometimes twice a night,and,unable to rest,end up comparing notes. I would not be too hasty to label Danea's visions as nightmares. Rather,what she described was a confused landscape of scenes,and memories which were not her own. ''I am in an old house,surrounded by objects and furniture,and pictures I know I have never seen before in my life,yet they are familiar to me. People who I have never met come and go,and I am very terrified of them..but not because they are strangers, it is because I _know_ them, although I do not know _how_ I know them! Sometimes, all of these people,and things vanish, and I am running. Just running and running,and I cannot stop,though I am so tired I feel as if I will expire. And I pass woods. Woods change to mountains, mountains crumble into vast fiery deserts,and on some dreams,the burning sand at last gives way to a gorgeous blue sea. It calls to me, it lulls me with its cool waves and dancing white caps and playful tides. At last,I am floating on its surface,yet even here,I am not at peace,because I have an imminent sense,that something is rising from the depths to devour me. but this is the verge of the world,and I can't remove myself,for there is no where to go.'' It seemed to exhaust her just to recount it,and it was no wonder. My vignettes were almost the mirror opposite of Daneas,yet no less disturbing.

My dreams seemed only to be the accumulation and echo of the strange random events of the previous summer,except they were either presented in a very lucid, cohesive sort of passion play,or frought with the most unsettling visuals,or twists. For the most part,even though I have known Danea long enough,I feel I can tell her most anything,the themes of these visions were generally of such a nature,that it flustered my modesty to articulate them.

In many of them,there is an angel. A bright angel of towering stature,who seems to be made of the brilliant rosy light of dawn,his spread wings like the healing sunrise! But this angel is faceless, his single feature being a mouth. I am not afraid though, and while I am on my knees, all devotion,asking for the angels blessing, the mouth opens as if it will speak words of love to me. Nothing comes out but the faint sounds of a violin. It is at once,the magic,sweet tone of my fathers violin, and a tune so ethereal and elusive, so stirring, it could have only been composed in heaven. Since it is faint,I find myself moving ever closer to the angel to better hear, But the tune remains ever distant,though it seems to increase,if that is possible,in enchantment. Before I realize it, I am so near the angel that his warm light is spilling across my face,and I want to touch him.I want to touch the agent of heavenly sound.The mouth,the silver throat,to feel the vibrato through my fingers. I reach out for this spirit,and as I do,Its wings fold around me,and it seems that all at once I am no more,and I am everything,and what I feel, it is akin to the ecstasy I feel when I sing, although,it is a hundred times deeper, and it makes me loathe to return to the waking world and leave the angel. Yet what frightens me, is that while I am inextricably bound to him,he begins to seem less like an Angel. I feel the living warmth of breath,of flesh beneath the cloak of light,and the steady drumming of a human heart. Can an angel not possess these things? Perhaps, but it is specifically these which spark my consuming rapture. I am caught in the arms of music alive,music aware,a mind,a pulse! He wants something from me,but I know not what,and if I did know,what would I do?..

This is the nonsense I struggle to convey to Danea, when I can barely explain it to myself. Knowing better than me the truth within the dark suggestion, daring to ever so lightly hint at its own existence, she teases me ,chides me, whispers in my ear,as if invisible listeners might hear her, the intimate counterpoint to my lambent angel.''Christine,you _must_ give in.'' ''you are horribly wicked Danea'' ''deliciously!'' ''Tell me what you know,my scandalous dear,which makes you think as you do,about my dreams?'' "enough''she answers,with faux gloominess.

Her bawdy good cheer,and my scolding do nothing to quell our wild uneasiness,and to erase certain strange thoughts in my heart.. occasionally in my dreams,The angel is even more human than I would dare describe here.

I have conceded to some of my friends superstitious practices. Not all ideas should be dismissed so handily,especially when one is already dealing , involuntarily with the shifting world of dreams.

We light ritual candles.An extremely pagan thing,but we say a prayer over them, which is really no different from what they do in church,to dispel the unquiet spirits around us. She has torn holes in our pillows and spent hours removing all the pigeon feathers,saying it is these which make us walk in our sleep,and keeps the dead from being at rest,so they may wander at will through our dreams.

It is all madness,and Who knows if its effects are tangible,for as I mentioned,we have recently

been too preoccupied to dwell on morbid things. Although,I am reminded of it unexpectedly when Danea, as Psyche, in her diaphanous robes,with her mischievous eyes painted in long shadows, dances near me,sidling from one side to another, from the dark to the light of me; while I in conflict hold counsel with myself ''Ah,be good dear Trylia, the world is fair and pure today, breath in the innocence of the new morning, as pristine as your own soul; Ah be true to your desires,lovely Trylia, the night is deep and silent,the the shadows never tell, let them lead you to your destiny, for it is he who holds your soul.'' and the chorus, in ghostly concurrence. ''_It is he who holds your soul''_

Somewhere between our bizarre adventure in the cellars, and the torment of our strange dreams,we were sent a blessing of sorts. We were in the dancers lounge one evening,which was virtually deserted,except for a few old relics gossiping amongst themselves,and a girl making flower crowns out of fall foliage. One of the old women was blind in one eye , with a cataract,and though we were across the room,she kept focusing it on me in the most unnerving way,so I found myself,unconsciously moving closer to Danea,as if she could offer me sanctuary from its glare. She was busy dealing hands of solitaire, and didn't notice. If she had,no doubt she would have taken it as a sign, of one thing or another.

She did however, notice when Matiel came in, wearing some sort of costume, as he often

did.An odd hybrid of stage clothes from current or past performances, and street clothes. She elbowed me in the side hard enough so I yelled, alerting those bejeweled crones,and the lone girl,with her vines and leaves. after bowing low,and placing his dented old homburg over his heart, he sat down across from us. He had a pipe dangling from his mouth, and he lit it with dramatic flair, studying us for a minute through the fragrant plumes of smoke.''Forgive me,little mademoiselles'' he was smiling behind his pipe ''Perhaps it is just the dearth of light, and if so,we will hold our penurious managers accountable presently.. but you two look as if you've been keeping company with the four _sisters Paradis_ over there''This inference directed at the ancient ladies bothered me more than the insult, for I knew the reference to the fourth sister of course,meant death. It is a tasteless saying within the opera,when encountering any of these faded thespians, who cannot bear to relinquish the glow of the footlights;Oh there he goes with his bride, or there she goes with her beaux, her biggest fan, etcetera.

''And you look very foolish with that stump hanging from your mouth'' I snapped ''I suppose you know that the smoke will ruin your voice?'' ''He drew back,with his usual showmanship, though I thought I saw a genuine shadow cross his brow,a flinch of pain in his eyes.''My grateful heart overflows! have you any other sage advice ,Miss Daae,to keep a poor,confused ignoramus from immolating his self on the wicked pleasures of the world? ''I have given my opinion,if I have any more you will certainly be the first to hear them'' ''Certainly'' he echoed, absently extinguishing his jolly pipe, while Danea reproached me with the glare of a gorgon. She needn't have stared at me so,for I was instantly sorry for laying into him. In truth,I thought he looked dashing with the pipe,and was glad to see him,as I had not in quite some time,away from the stage,but something in me broke just then,and I was suddenly feeling as if I must fight against being suffocated alive in this building..I felt Danea pull my hair,and I shut my mouth from further insults.

''Forgive my companion'' Danea said sweetly. ''We _are_ looking rather worse for wear. You

see, it is true the opera is haunted, and we've been absolutely beleaguered by terrible phantoms since you have forsaken our company three weeks since. What can we do against such monsters,without a guide,we haven't slept in days! He leaned forward,looking very serious. ''Ah..ghosts!Never speak of them in jest, for they watch you while you sleep,and they can change your destiny with one wave of a white hand!'' He suddenly looked up,and I jumped simultaneously, for I felt a light hand on my shoulder.Looking around, I saw it was the girl who made the autumn crowns. She had three of the golden wreaths in her hands,and she placed one on each of our heads, then silently,putting her finger to her lips,took her leave.

So Danea turned our terrible situation into a coquettish fib, and this for what it was worth, has ended our days of dark enchantment,braving the fearsome labyrinth that winds beneath our beloved palace.

That event was the prologue to a wild evening. Matiel introduced us to a strange, clacking contraption he called a 'bone shaker' A wooden and metal thing which consisted of two huge wheels,the front most having a set of pedals,and a seat. He had two of them,and after after a few crude lessons,we were taking turns riding solo,or in tandem with Mateil.

The monstrosity's name was well earned. Riding over the streets of the city,I felt as if it would rattle my teeth out. It ate one of my shoes,and tore the hem of my dress and Danea lost her little earrings. But Mateil had a bottle of Spanish wine,and plenty of jokes,and after a while we prided ourselves that we were absolute masters of the terrible rolling machine.

We rode through the Bois de Bologne, terrifying all the little animals out of their sleep,and almost falling into the water. We pushed ourselves along the shores of the Seine, racing with the distant lights of little fishing boats. We were completely disheveled, but happier than we had been in weeks,with the exercise and the fresh air. We had a little picnic by the dark water,and while we were eating, a couple taking a twilight stroll made note of our alarming appearance, the woman grabbing her husbands arm and hurrying him off. Looking at each other, we burst out laughing,because Danea looked so perfectly like a witch,with her long dark hair sticking up all around her head and covering her shoulders, and the stains of stage makeup shadowing her eyes.

Returning that night,I half expected,or perhaps I was hoping for my room to speak to me,as it has,with its soul. It's strange,envious soul of trembling music. But there was nothing. Only the deep silence of an empty room. Perhaps it was all my imagination,my loneliness.

For a week now,our friend has completely captivated us. No matter how tired we are,or how we complain of sore feet,he abducts us every evening,to conquer some new corner of Paris. Our favorite places are the little cafes. Rooms full of artists and poets,where every night some lovely diva, looking deliciously world weary and sage in her paste jewels and garish costume, sings of sorrows and desires we have yet to know, or at least,that _I _have yet to know. Sometimes when I am scanning the room for someone of renown, I see Mateil doing the same, but with a very melancholy air,and then after,he does not tell jokes or run ahead of us shouting and dancing like a madman, but drags behind,sighing and glancing at us now and then with the look of a beaten dog.

I no longer attempt to wheedle his sad secrets out of him, for an odd thing happened which made me once and for all,wary of doing so. We had taken a day trip to Versailles,just he and I, for Danea was off somewhere with her beaux, who wanted no company with anyone. It was all so romantic,walking through the gardens, for even in fall they are beautiful,with white roses and lillies, and golden green foliage. But all the beauty seemed to be weighing Mateil down rather than inspiring him.

We sat down in a little arbor, and I could no longer contain myself. ''My dear friend, tell me what is wrong, your sighs are shaking the earth!'' ''Christine!'' he sounded as if he were on the verge of weeping,and I felt very uneasy. ''it is impossible to put into words.'' ''Come now,nothing is so unspeakable, I am your friend,always!'' Then quite suddenly,he leaned over and kissed me, not as a fond friend, lightly on the forehead, or sweetly on the cheek,but as a lover would, on the mouth. I have never been kissed this way, and if all lovers kisses are as such, may I never be again. It was a very clinical and determined kiss,without a bit of fire or soul. There is no way to respond to such a strange offense. It seemed to go on forever.His warm breath,of cloves and wine, his hands, one gently over mine and the other touching my face,and his kiss, as cold as ice!

As abruptly as it began,it was over. He turned away and hung his head,so when at last he spoke, I could hardly hear him. ''I am sorry Christine!..I can't tell you,how very sorry..but,do you perhaps know me a little better now?'' ''I don't! I don't understand you at all, but I forgive you'' ''Then you are still my friend? ''Of course,but you try my patience everyday, you are wearing me out, and I am not sixteen yet!''' ''Yes, how selfish of me to ruin the last of our fine days together'' ''The last?There you go being cryptic again!'' He smiled at last,although,like the kiss,it was not entirely genuine.''I meant, winter is coming, there will be no more romantic walks through the flowers, only four or five months to breathe in the dust of the theater,we must enjoy the fresh air while we can,and not cloud the blue skies with needless sorrow'' ''You'll do well to take your own advice,._I _know better than to tempt fate by crying for things I can never have'''

''Ah,but fate herself is the temptress,Christine.We are led to believe from the beginning that we are one person. we are given a name and spend our whole lives trying to fit into it,and we tell ourselves _that_ is our destiny,to walk about in society wearing this name,though it might be ill fitting and uncomfortable, it makes us acceptable. We dare not disencumber ourselves, or we are shunned. I cry not for what I lack, but for all that I _have_ which must be denied, and forsaken,until all I have to do with fate is to manipulate her,to try and render her powerless.'' ''Perhaps I begin to to understand now'' I replied, trying to be affirmative.''if just a little..we are always so much more than the world will ever allow us to be.. unless of course,we are on the stage, performing for them.'' ''Then our reality becomes their illusion.'' ''And therein lies the only acceptance we can hope for.'' ''Well,God bless the theater!''

As a token of my forgiveness,I offered him a kiss on the cheek. He smiled,honestly,though a little wistfully,and gently tugged one of the curls that had escaped from my under my hat,but he did not return my kiss.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Last night was the final performance of _ the beggar maid_ ,and we were exhausted,having done it for a private party in the morning, and then twice more for the public, once in the afternoon, and once in the early evening. The highlight for me is at the end,when I am nothing but the mournful voice in the woods. ''Oh answer Gabriel! The night is deep and silent as a well, send your voice to me once more from the waters of eternity, oh speak, speak,for these shadows will not tell! ''As I sang these lines for the last time, alone in the false night with the canopy of stars above, I felt a great wave of sadness crush my heart, as if _were _poor Trylia, and hot tears ran unheeded down my cheeks, and I was very glad no one could see me.

We received a wonderful send off from the evening audience,taking our bows twice, but afterwards I could only think of escaping as quickly as possible to my room,and pulling the blanket up over my head.

I had gotten safely away, and had just drifted off to sleep,after throwing myself down, shoes and all on the bed, when Daneas familiar tapping sounded on the door.

I argued, I pleaded, I reasoned,but tonight our friend would take no refusals.We were to dress in our finest clothes,and meet him in the courtyard at eight o'clock, for tonight we would be the entertained,not the entertainment.

Since every piece of clothing I possessed was either patched,out of style,too short or out of season,I borrowed a dress from Danea. She had trunks full of them,supplied by her mysterious paramour,as well as hats, shoes,parasols,fichus,aprons and furs. It was true that she practically never wore the same dress twice. I have no taste,so I let her have her way with me,and when she was finished I had hard work to recognize myself.

The dress was all in shades of dusky blue,which set off quite well,the color of my hair,and

brightened my complexion, so my plain face was almost fetching. Danea fixed my hair ,taking advantage of its natural waves,and ornamenting it simply with a huge black bow. I stopped her from painting my face. I have enough of this everyday on stage, and I have no interest in playing the coquette in reality. I wore my white fur. Although the weather was still too warm,it was my comfort,and after completely forgiving myself for excepting it,I felt guilty for keeping it locked away.

Danea was a vision. Her dress was a confection of pink and black, with a rather revealing neckline, and short sleeves showing the graceful length of her arms. She wore on her head a matching hat, with a huge black ostrich plume which danced and fluttered whenever she moved,seeming to look down on us in regal disdain. Her jewelry was all onyx and rose tourmaline, except for her necklace, two strands of blood coral which she wore for luck.

We were there as promised,and found a handsome cab waiting there for us, and ever more handsome Mateil already inside. He was immaculate. Never had I seen him so well put together. He was dressed all in black,and plum and gray,with a bit of wild color,which he can never resist,in the violet cravat about his neck. He had traded in his dusty bowler for an opera hat, and a walking stick with a silver handle in the form of a griffin.

All in all,I think we made a stunning trio. It is so strange, to be so done up as if I were getting ready to go on stage,and then to look up and and find myself , not in the opera, but out in the world virtually unnoticed in a sea of costumes and painted faces. This is a novel sort of anonymity.I think I could grow accustomed to quite easily.

Our destination was the Latin quarter,in the imposing shadow of the pantheon, and a place

called the _musee du sappho,_where according to Mateil, we could see the future of Paris. The way he talked,we never would have guessed it was a theater.

It was like no place we had ever seen. We entered what we thought, for one disappointed moment, was our intended rendezvous. A grim, medieval structure,with a crumbling facade, and its few lights dimmed so all that was visible to us, were frightening shadows which slunk,and crawled and floated along the moldy walls like ghostly leviathans. Instead of walking up, we were led down a narrow, winding staircase which took us far below the streets of Paris.And so were introduced to the Musee du Sappho,or more common with those who frequent it, L'odeum Du Ganymede. Considering these two names side by side,in reflecting I would simply call it the theater of the grand confusion.

One could never imagine such hedonistic opulence,thriving beneath these gray ancient streets! On a diminutive scale,it rivaled the opera for elegance and excess,and the crowds filling its magnificent corridors,were no less refined than those throngs pushing through the Ile de la cite' every evening in gilded carriages to visit Garniers palace.

The rooms were rich with the most amazing art,the likes of which I have never seen anywhere.Tapestries and murals in blazing colors with forms and figures like images from strange dreams. High above, the ceilings were painted _trompe l'oeil _ to look like the sky. in the foyer,it was night, with the constellations which are visible in summer, and in the theater it was day,with the sun in a brilliant sky, much like the ceiling in my room, but alive with all manner of fantastical creatures. Matiel pointed out that many of the sculptures,some of which were so soft looking I wanted to reach up and touch them,were done by women. It was in its entirety,a breathtaking picture,and yet there was something quite dark about it I couldn't place my finger on. Perhaps it was just the cool shadow I was feeling,of things to come,a blind premonition,but it was like looking at the world of the opera Garnier through a distorted mirror.

The play was an interpretation of 'The girl with the golden eyes' With its tragedy,and its horrific ending intact,yet I don't believe it was Monsieur Balzac's intention for his tale to be turned into a comedy. To begin with,all of the roles were switched,the parts of women were played by men,and the men played by women,Except for De Marsay, who nonetheless, made a very effeminate fop.He pursues a _reluctant_ Paquita, only to be horrified when she relents, at the imminent prospect of making love. Then,in a baffling climax, Paquita reveals to the ecstatic Henri,that _she _is really a man, but it is too late,because he is of course,dying. Then in the end Henri has transformed back into a regular gentleman,winking at the audience. I will confess, I did laugh with everyone else, although I did not entirely understand it.

We stayed on for celebrations which lasted well into the night. There was yet another suite of rooms beyond the theater, even more lavish..The entire heavens were stretched out above us here, and the illusion was so ingenious,that the stars seemed to twinkle and pulse,and the moon and sun,in their opposing kingdoms, to turn. The entertainment also continued. Men and women in the most elaborate costumes, but still,women dressed in breeches and frock coats,in top hats and ties, and men dressed like queens and goddesses. some of them treated us to song, and had the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. Not even in the Opera are there voices of such dark, rich clarity,s uch resonance and melancholy.It is the tone which stirs my heart, the voice which is most like the voice of an angel possessing neither feminine or masculine qualities.

There were acrobats, on trapezes magically lowered from the ceiling,and a short play, performed entirely in a guilded cage suspended above the room. It involved the courtship of a pair of exotic birds, and in the end, escaping the cage,they soared over us magically, looking as if they were truly flying, unattached to anything.

The three of us sat together for a while,but Mateil was unusually restless,and his good cheer waning rapidly,even though,once,spying an accordion player across the room,he rose,and retrieving his hat,used it to mimic his playing as he strolled about the room. But all the while he smiled and laughed with us,his gaze remained distant,ever searching, tirelessly across the crowds.

The wine and brandy flowed endlessly,and never more freely as it did past the lips of Mateil. even Danea had taken off her dainty shoes and thrown herself into the bacchanalia with careless abandon. I don't understand how they held it, when one glass made me dizzy. Besides the wine,she and Mateil were sharing a ritual absinthe,whose lethal evolution is always so lovely to witness,But they were half drunk,and spilling the water,and dropping the spoons on the floor,and then laughing like maniacs and drinking it bitter from the glass.

While I was attempting to converse with Danea over some nonsense, Mateil suddenly took leave of us, without excusing himself, blundering his way through the crowd. ''Ah,what a shame'' Danea commented after him. ''He's quite drunk you know, how will he fare?'' ''Perhaps he will find some lovely lady who will let him drink beer from her shoe'' My reply threw Danea into such a paroxysm of laughter that she fell from her chair, landing on the floor with a terrible crash. Upon restoring herself to her seat, she discovered she had been sitting on her elaborate headdress, and it was smashed flat. It was reduced to a pink platter, with the huge feather still standing up importantly.

She set it down on the table in front of her, and after staring intently at it for a minute or so, burst into tears. I tried to comfort her,Reminding her of her three dozen at home.''But I like _this_ hat!'' ' 'Why this one in particular Danea?'' ''Because of the feather!'' ''and there it is. Look, you do not need the rest of it'' And I plucked the decoration form the ruined hat, and stuck it in her hair.

The session of weeping seemed to have sobered her a little, but she was still deeply affected by the absinthe, and wanted to experience everything with her hands. To caress the sculptures,and the statues, and all the tapestries and textures surrounding us. Instead we discovered several long couches placed about the room, and we at last,chose to recline on one of these and focus our attention on the illusory sky above.

''Christine,do you think the stars know what fate has in store for us? It seems,since they are so high above us, that they could see everything ahead of us, as well as behind.'' '' Fate is mutable Danea, Not even the heavens can fix it.'' ''Then our destiny must change with each new day. What a very humbling thought.'' ''Yes,I suppose. So it would seem, that by the time we reach the end, we have forgone a million possibilities, a million different lives.'' ''And how many of us would choose what we were ultimately left with, if each of the myriad possibilities were laid out before us from the start? ''And how many of us,given that,would condemn ourselves to an eternity of indecision?'' She laughed at this saying ''yes,how true,I cannot even decide what scarf or hat to wear everyday,What sort of disaster would I make out of choosing a destiny?'' ''I would not want to know,and mourne all those I had to relinquish."

I must have fallen asleep, for it was half past ten when we were looking at the sky,and now in the distance,high high in the night streets above us, I could hear the cathedral bells striking midnight,and Danea was gone.

My head was aching as I made my way through the raucous crowds, straining my eyes find the pink and black dress. My pulse was pounding in my temples like a mallet, but there was a carafe,still mostly full, abandoned on a nearby table, and a long drink from it cleared my head somewhat.

I saw her at last, far across the room, where a group of inebriated musicians were playing out of tune,and the instruments sounded as if they were arguing. She was with Mateil. They were sitting together in a deep velvet chair, and She was comforting him.He seemed to be in great distress, his head bent,and his shoulders slumped with grief. I stood back ,knowing I could do nothing but interfere.

It seemed the emotions in that chair were as changeable as the autumn sky. Clouds passing and repassing the sun. Whatever sorrow was tormenting Mateil, it would recede beneath Daneas deft ministrations of kindness, and then return at another angle with renewed vehemence. I will never know what really happened,but it seems I have lost two friends with one blow.

As he had with me the day at Versailles,he impulsively kissed Danea,but apparently,she did not find it as objectionable as I ,for it was reciprocated heartily and continued,until,feeling violently sick,I turned away and ran.

I do not know how I found my way out of there,but my face was hot with shame and grief,and I was grateful for the cold air. I flung my ridiculous shoes into the street,and continued to run,and run,out of the quarter,and down the black empty streets,until I had run all the way back to the opera,and shut myself up in my room.

I can hardly articulate the tumult in my heart. I did not know until tonight, what feelings I harbored toward Mateil, and I know that I have behaved deplorably in passing him off lightly, In spending so much time deliberately in his company while flattering myself that I was above infatuation. Now I am jealous,and heartsick, as if I have any right to be, but I can't deny it, and why could I not have been as skillful with his spirit as Danea? It is true, I have no cunning with any living thing! Since papa died it is as if I have forgotten the simple dynamics of love. It's as if I have let myself become a ghost, unable to touch or affect anyone, And now I see I will pay dearly for it..


	4. Christines journal November 1875

Again,thank you so much for reading. This is really turning into a soap opera!..Honestly,there is a purpose to it though! In case any readers are wondering if Christine's diary is just going to go on forever and ever,I will give you hope,it ends in April of 1876,next time we hear from her directly,will be in the spring and summer of 1881. Erik is coming around again very soon.

NOVEMBER 1875

It has been nearly a week since the events at the Musee Du Sappho. The disaster I was bracing for was not quite as apocalyptic as I expected,although my heart is wounded,and the situation is more confusing than ever.

Danea and I had a tremendous fight the next day. As we had no work ,and were being given a small vacation from our lessons, as a token of appreciation for our splendid efforts with the beggar maid, I had planned to hide for the next three days.

I was desperate not to see either Danea or Mateil,but we had an obligatory meeting with the managers,concerning the programs for the fall season,and it was unavoidable.

Mateil was absent,but Danea was there, looking ragged and preoccupied, and completely puzzled at my refusal to acknowledge her with any more than a withering glance.

She pestered and teased me throughout the meeting,though it seemed her humor was strained, until at last, at my limit I confronted her over her crime. Oh it was a catastrophe! She tried at first to deny it completely,accusing me of having delusions,then in an abrupt turnaround,confessed and laid into me for being a self absorbed dunderhead,walking through life blind and deaf and calling it piety. I called her a jade,and a drab,and a dozen other crude epithets,dreadful words I had never even dared think before. I was sorry as soon as as it was done, but the arrows had hit their mark. Danea stood as straight as a soldier,as is her habit when she is insulted,or wounded. Her face turned an uncomfortable crimson,and then went pale,but she did not cry. I was not so stoic. I was shaking all over ,and and the tears spilled down my cheeks before I could hide them behind my hand. In a moment,she recovered her equanimity,and turned and walked away,without looking back, And I truly believed that I had lost my friend forever.

It was late that night,after a solitary day of absolute misery,that she tapped on my door. I was so relieved to hear those five taps,one for each letter of her name,that I did not hesitate to fling the door open. I was ready to apologize profusely,fully expecting an equally remorseful Danea, but it would not be so simple.

Though we forgave each other readily enough,there was a pall over us that could not be dispelled. It was such,that I was afraid to ask outright.I knew it was related somehow to that night in the Latin quarter,but that it was much more than our little folly of wine and stolen kisses.

We sat on the divan,studying the innocent sky,trying to find our way back to former carefree times by searching for faces in the skillfully rendered clouds,but it was no use,our minds returned continually to the shadow just over our shoulder.

''Who do you suppose painted that sky Christine?'' She did not wait for my answer,but continued'' ''I think it is the very same person who painted the ceilings of the Musee Du Sappho.'' I was incredulous,that she should connect the two seemed silly.' 'But that can't be. It was a genius who created those skies'' '' Of course. He, is no less so just because he has adapted his style for the tastes of the opera. He knows the charm of simplicity, how to stay within the constraints of the grand design while creating an enchanting illusion. But in a subterranean environment,far removed and hidden from the everyday world he is free to be true to his passion,as well as his genius. To create absolute magic without fear of disapproval.'' ''I see,but who would disapprove of such beautiful things?" ''Those who do not see beauty, but abomination...Christine, do you know why Mateil brought us to the the underground theater?.'' ''I can only guess by your talk it must have been to show us the ceilings..Ah, Matiel is an artist also, what a phenomenon he is then!'' ''Christine,you are being flippant. If you will not hear me out respectfully, I won't continue,but it will diminish our friendship.'' I had never heard her speak so,with such gravity. I felt as if I had rocks in the pit of my stomach, but I bade her to go on.

''Matiel holds you in very high regard Christine'' Oh how I wanted to scoff at this! but I bit back the words until it hurt. ''Your devotion and your passion for music have have solely inspired him to continue his singing-'' ''But he hates the Opera,he says so constantly'' ''Christine! Is the Opera Garnier the end and the means to everything? You speak of it as if it the pillar of the earth'' ''It is to me,and if he thought so well of me,he would know this and respect it by refraining from such disparaging talk.'' ''Perhaps if you had listened more closely, you would have heard something besides the sound of your own indignation.'' ''Oh what is it Danea, I am so tired of all these cryptic ramblings!''

When Danea is agitated,or struggling to collect her thoughts,she has an annoying habit of pulling at her forelocks. She did this now,so energetically,I thought they would come out in her fingers, Then she sighed and continued. ''He brought us to the Musee Du Sappho, because he has tenure there.'' ''He works there? And what does he do,clean murals and sweep floors?'' ''You are certainly a persistent dunce Christine. Matiel is one of the performers, and has been nearly five months since,and he wanted us,as his dearest friends,to know how he has spent his time'' ''So that is his secret,that he puts on a gown and plays Juliette? It is strange,but certainly not a revelation. We have done just the same here many times,as an exercise,and in the orient,it is _only _ men,women are not even allowed on the stage,so what is the sense in making it a grand mystery?I think our friend sometimes does not realize when he has stepped out from the footlights.''

''I see it will be a grueling task to stir you! I am only saying,be aware,there is so much more to the world than what we see in passing. It is not simply a matter of opening your eyes,but your heart and soul as well.'' I hearkened back to the conversation with Mateil the day at Versailles. Had I not said nearly the same thing to him? and now my own words came back to haunt me, and I felt like tearing _my_ hair out! ''Please, please Danea! Tell me what I must see! It can't be so objectionable,and I cannot be so rigid."

She was silent for a long while. She had gone from pulling at her hair, to rubbing her forehead with two fingers,as if her thoughts were making her head ache. She spoke at last, but with great deliberation. ''It is not possible to articulate these things outright Christine,as I hardly understand them myself, but I will give you an idea.

Do you recall,some months ago,we were walking on the boulevard of the Italians,and in the crowds we saw two gentleman walking together, rather apart from everyone?" ''Yes,I vaguely recall,only because they looked so out of place. I thought perhaps they must be foreigners from some exotic country, as they appeared very lost and uncomfortable.'' ''Well,I assure you,they were not foreigners. One of them in fact,was Matiel. You did not recognize him, perhaps because then, you did not know him so well, but I think now,it is more accurate to say,he did not want to be known.'' ''That is absurd. If he did not want to be known why did he choose such a place as the boulevard on a Sunday afternoon to occupy?'' ''It was not entirely his choice. It was.. well, a concession, a concession to his companion, the gentleman we saw him with.'' ''Why, if he wished to hide, would he throw himself into that whirlwind of people just to escort some stranger about town?'' ''Because Christine, it is his _pleasure, _not his obligation.'' Very quickly,before I could decipher this latest statement,she retrieved a folded sheet of paper from her pinafore and gave it to me. It was a poem by Verlaine called 'Birds in the night',scribbled down in Mateil's handwriting;

You were not over-patient with me, dear;  
This want of patience one must rightly rate:  
You are so young! Youth ever was severe  
And variable and inconsiderate!

You had not all the needful kindness, no;  
Nor should one be amazed, unhappily:  
You're very young, cold sister mine, and so  
' Tis natural you should unfeeling be!

''Mateil is quite fond of poetry you know,especially Verlaine. He says this poem reminds him of the three of us together ,although I don't quite see it. Are you familiar with him,with Monsieur Verlaine and his works?'' ''Not entirely. I hardly read anymore since leaving home..But I hear talk of him,In the cafes and the theater, of how he has been in prison for shooting at his friend, the young poet.I forget his name-'' ''Rimbaud! Not his friend ,his _lover_. have you been asleep your whole life Christine?"

At last,as it came to me what she meant,the awfulness of it sinking into my conscience like a great black boulder,I thought at once,I must be the most unique fool in all of Paris. I am young,I know,but one has only to look around to see that Paris hides a broken heart behind a brilliant disguise. There are bloodstained walls behind lush gardens, burned trees in the Bois De Bologne, among all the green. from Saint Gervais to Billancourt, charred skeletons of houses,the overgrown foundations jutting up between new buildings. It was not the same city where I had lived with my father. Even mama Valerius, who had lived here so many happy years before retiring to Perros, recoiled at the idea of sending me here,unchaperoned,saying the war had made people go mad,although,out of decency,she never defined what she meant by mad.

I think my conscience is a more fickle and perverse thing than any deviant could dream up. Though I was feeling sick, as if I would never be able to go outside again, as if all the horrors of the world had been saved just for me,and this very moment, I was on the verge of laughter. My ability to put an image,hence,any understanding,to what she had just relayed to me,was limited to a vision of the great god Zeuss, flapping about in his various disguises in his attempt to debauch young maidens and beautiful young men.

''Christine,why do you have that foolish look on your face? What is there to smile at?'' ''Certainly nothing. I didn't mean to laugh--'' ''Do you know, there are places in the world where they put you in prison for even thinking of such things, and as for actually succumbing to such desires,they will cut off your head.'' ''I don't believe you!'' I cried. ''Not a word of it. How can I? It is unspeakable, and if _I _ were prey to such thoughts, such _eccentricities , _I think I would be better off without my head!'' ''I see. Because you are my friend, I have overestimated your capacity for gracious sympathy. Somehow I imagined there was much more to you Christine, or even if not, your feelings for Mateil at least, would lead you a greater compassion.'' ''Are you out of your head Danea, have you given a thought to what you are asking me to believe? You expect me to absorb this foul concept,and go on as if it were nothing'' ''Foul! You are speaking of someone very dear to us both. How little you understand your fellow human beings Christine. Would you throw away an entire friendship because he is not your ideal? He suffers everyday the fate of an outcast,and now you would condemn him just the same.'' ''I am not condemning Mateil. It is not possible,because I simply do not believe you. There is nothing to condemn.''

'It is not I who wish you to hear the truth,it is Mateil himself, for we are his steadfast friends,and if we cannot know him as he is,we will loose him forever. Again,I implore you,open your eyes,this is a new, mad world we live in. It is not the cloistered little seaside existence of your Mama Valerius. And I will tell you something else, a side note perhaps,in what so recklessly urges me to try and reach you! My dreams,dear Christine,the spirits surrounding me,they tell me again and again that soon,you will be in the very crossroads of this epiphany,but take heed they warn, for it is a revolution of the soul,and if you do not step lightly you will be lost .''

I stood with my arms crossed,focusing on our images in the mirror. Just watercolor copies not real,and likewise nothing they said was real. It was all backwards. The flow of time and logic ,all reversed. ''You have really missed your calling Danea, but if I want my fortune told ,next time I will go to the gypsies in the street. At least I know,they will only steal my money, and not my mind.'' ''Very well then,I am done. There is nothing else to say when you insist on being such a donkey. But remember who you are Christine. That just as Mateil or myself,or any of us who call the theater home, you must turn your face up and strain your neck everyday just to see,and be seen by the world,and if you give yourself airs and forget and forsake those who stand beside you,who in that distant,indifferent throng above will pause to make room for you?''

She left me,still standing there with my arms folded tightly,glaring at the space her image had occupied. I remained there,in that odd pose until my back began aching,and then sat down on the carpet next to the mirror, resting my cheek against the cool glass.

I was aware after a moment or two,that I was talking to myself like a lunatic, talking into to the insensate glass.''why have you abandon me to this silence?Now everything is wrong.''

Lately I have begun to see a rather strange pattern . Whenever Danea visits me in this room,or we have spent any length of time solely in each others company, her bizarre ideas, her superstitious talk strike me acutely. It is a deep,abiding impression that I can't dismiss easily. It affects me so,that at times I not in control of my own thoughts.

Just as with Danea and her strange dreams,I am plagued by visions of faces I have never known. People flashing by as if caught on a carousel and places I have never been, flickering on and off,and on again in an endless variety of scenes and seasons,and all this tends to leave me in a sort of waking trance. Coming out of it I sometimes find myself doing strange things;Writing down words to songs I cannot ever recall hearing,speaking a strange language. Once I had the presence of mind to put some of these words to paper,and then ask the tutor what they meant. After some perfunctory research, he informed me That they were for the most part,Persian and Hindi. All were various terms of endearment,or affection. Now, unconsciously ,I was tracing something in the cloud my breath left on the glass, not anything foreign or mysterious,just the letter E,and that was all.

I am not as hardhearted and ignorant as Danea thinks. I have been in Paris long enough to see for myself what is beneath the disguise,and much like my friend,I believe that soon she will step out from behind the mask,and turn the world on its head. Working in the theater it is impossible to deny, for we are like a weather vane for the changes caprices of society. All of their desires, dreams, sorrows,even before they are spoken aloud, are played out by us,the actors ,for them,so they may be rejected or embraced without true consequence. We see the world before the world sees itself. We are the mirror.

Contrary to My friends belief that I think myself highborn,and pious, I feel more of a kinship with the cast off lorettes, the peddlers,and the musicians in the streets than I ever would with those glittering, idle crowds in the Ile De La Cite', or the lovely, indifferent faces floating by in the decadent fleets of pleasure boats on the Seine.

Danea does not know me very well at all then. Perhaps that is my fault. I have never told her of how I went about with my father,how we made our living playing music in the streets,and lived like paupers until Professor Valerius and his wife took pity on us and gave us a home.

How can I believe what she says about Mateil, however willing I might be. I know of the culture of the androgyne, of the small societies of women who completely exclude men for their own pleasure. I am aware of the odd tastes and exotic preferences of the world,as much as I can be.But they are all largely, whims of fashion ,playgrounds for the indolent and eccentric. It is high style now to make ones life as much as possible,like that of the Gods and revelers of mount Olympus.

Now I am to accept the idea that Mateil, who represents nearly everything I aspire to in this life of illusion, has adopted these curiosities as rote, and is so dedicated to them as to let it cause him torment. What is it that I must _accept_ ? Has he a lover..A lover! If so, why does he go about throwing away his kisses on us? All at once, something so silly comes to mind, circling around and around my thoughts like a goldfish in a crystal bowl,a stupid children's rhyme;

Georgie Porgie pudding pie,kissed the girls and made them cry

When the boys came out to play,Georgie Porgie ran away.

I cannot force myself to accept something,if I know not what it is, but Danea is wise to remind me that the populace watches us from the corner of its eye. We,as a whole, are a curiosity,and we do ourselves a terrible disservice by sacrificing one another for the fickle doctrines of a world which would just as soon forget us

How do I balance these things! People are such despicable hypocrites. _They crowd about us,my father and I,while he plays the violin. With his two hands,he draws out music which cries out to heaven,to the soul,music so sweet that I can hardly breath as I sit there in his shadow. They lean close,because they cant help but be moved. When the little concert is over,he bows.He is not standing in the gray street,but on a golden stage,the illusion is perfect,except for the empty hat at his feet,and when the people see this,they scoff.''Does he think he's Paganini?'' ''What a wretch,and with a child no less'' ''Oh the little girl,the poor child'' But they leave nothing in the hat,nothing but their cruel remarks,and some just slink away,as if they've heard nothing at all._

These are the same people who pay a small fortune every night for the best seats in the opera, just so they can listen to some croaking Prima Donna,or watch the elephantine semaphores of a ballerina with two left feet.

Yet ,the world _is _so full of unexpected kindness,of simple beauty and endless mystery, but it all seems to drift out of reach as childhood fades. If only I could have those memories back.. Sometimes in fathomless dreams,I dive into the chasm where they live, and I can almost touch them.So close am I! but they escape in the first rays of the morning sun. If I could have them back,I would surely be whole again.

Why is my former life nothing but a collection of fragments,so much that I cannot remember! Darkness in my memory,as deep as the sea,where voices call out to me,and then disappear .The year preceding my first illness seems completely gone,and Mama Valerius, in a strange turn from her typical loquacity,would never answer my questions,and papa would only look so sad, that I did not dare pester him.

My cohesive memories begin from the moment I woke from the fever,and found,tucked beneath my arm,a new doll,and a butterfly catcher. Laid in the netting, was a note that said only 'For the stars'. As soon as I could walk,I went to thank my father,and I shall never forget the stricken look on his face. I was never to know the truth behind it,only that he had not given me those gifts,or ever seen them before .

I can't so willingly embrace whatever insanity Mateil is toying with ,as Danea has, but I won't forsake him. I am forever on guard against losing anything else in this life. I have always thought,the universe was an immaculate balance of good,and evil.. Now,taking this strange situation with My friends into account,I must question everything I have ever believed. Can life be such a mystery?I say no, it is only myself getting older, hoping to be wiser.. But then,some things will not suffer any explanation. It is not _all _in my mind. I have blindly written a word on the glass. More letters following the E.I try to read them,but they have already dissipated.

It seems Danea has made up her mind not to be cross with me,And I in turn have decided not to make up _my_ mind about anything. It has worked out very well so far.

We are in rehearsal for Voyage to the moon,and only Matiel plays a lead this time,as king Cosmos. Oh I am so fond of Monsieur Offenbach!He must be a madman to think these up. A race of people living on the moon in bland contentment,until a scientist from the earth visits and infects them all with a strange virus, love.

Meantime,we have continued on in our usual fashion, when we are not working,as if nothing has changed. Nothing has I suppose,unless it is me. I know Mateil is aware of what Danea said to me,or tried to say. He seems less troublesome than before.He doesn't mope or run away anymore. Several times we have visited the Musee Du Sappho again, and there he has let himself be seen with a gentleman. Mateil will be animated and cheerful at these times,but his friend is much less so, looking nervous and very out of place. He is an older,very distinguished looking gentleman,not the younger man he had been walking with on the boulevard.

Though I adore My friend,and have tried to be charitable in my heart, whenever we sit together,it is reflected in his eyes, in his every gesture that I am just as intolerant as ever,though it is subconscious ,it is no less unkind.

I blame Danea, because for some reason,she has forbidden me to confront Mateil directly with the subject. How do I ever understand If he does not tell me himself!

Most days though,we are the same as ever,when these thoughts are put aside for awhile. We are never idle or gloomy,even though the weather is turning,and we must spend more and more time indoors.

Mateil has a flat in the Pigalle, and it is so pleasant to hide there for hours and hours, reading his booksHe has hundreds of them and listening as he plays some new composition on the mandolin,or the flute. He writes the most beautiful pieces,and songs as well. But he is much affected by the works of Byron, and the songs are generally full of sadness, unrequited longing and darkness. He saves the lighthearted fare for us, but Danea sings almost as bad as I dance. It doesn't matter. It is such a joy to raise your voice in song with your friends.

Matiel's Flat is as confused as his mind. He has covered the walls and the mantels with wonderful works of art ,and even photographs,and playbills from the opera. But interspersed with these are costumes and clothes,thrown everywhere,draped across some very fine pieces of furniture,which are stacked with newspapers. Dozens of wine bottles,festooned with candles,or flowers in various stages of dessication,crowd the shelves and even the floors.

On the fireplace,some little genius of architecture has woven his own masterpiece across the metropolis of decanters. It is awe inspiring,the work of this dedicated artist,the delicate tracery of silk stretching out for nearly two yards,each section of web its own unique and fragile universe. Alas,the beautiful abattoir bears no signs of its intended purpose. At one end the artist himself hangs, dead and dry,and at the distant other,a hapless moth, equally dead,has escaped the spiders appetite,but not his own foolishness.

Despite all this clutter,it is comfortable. There is a window facing the south,overlooking a small garden,that gathers all of the noon sun in a concentrated stream,and Matiel has put a wide divan underneath it. Occasionally,when we are too lazy,or lacking in inspiration to find any amusement outdoors,we lay there together,sharing the sun.,on either side of Mateil, using his shoulders for our pillow while we take turns reading to each other. Sometimes the heavy autumn sun is so hypnotic,we fall asleep in it,and are often late for rehearsals,or lessons. Well, I suppose we are just overgrown children.

The light is so healing here, slow and sweet like honey,I have no dreams at, all asleep in its soft fire..No dreams,but what is it that I can't see just over the bright horizon?..'_what hills what hills are those my love?..''_

As we reach the premier of voyage to the moon,everyone has begun to seem very tired,I suppose,it is because the holiday season is approaching,and we are all thinking of family,the ones who have passed,and the ones who are far away. Mateil has a mother in Spain,and Danea has purposely disowned her own family.They are wealthy, titled people who live somewhere in the south of France. She only speaks fondly of a younger sister. Mama Valerius and I have agreed it is better for me to remain here through the winter and concentrate on my studies and my singing,and come to Perros in the spring.

I would like Danea to come with me. She hasn't been to the seaside since she was a child, and since her eighteenth birthday is in March,it would make me unhappy to leave her alone here. It's true,that in each others absence,we both have Matiel, but he can be so moody sometimes it is like being alone.

Besides this,lately Danea has not been looking well,and within the last week has been unusually quiet and nervous. It has so preoccupied me,I haven't even given a thought to the present drama with Mateil. I think he sees it as well, though he has said nothing to me.Now and then, stationed at opposing ends of whatever venue we happen to be occupying at the moment, with Danea, by accident or design,standing apart from us,we have the occasion to observe,that besides being in the grip of pensive thoughts,she is often in a very strange pose It like someone bracing against an icy gust of wind,her arms wrapped tightly around her own waist. When she notices that we have been staring, she laughs and puts her hands to her face as if she were quite embarrassed.

Yesterday we were in Matiel's flat, enjoying a few hours of respite before final rehearsals. Danea had taken a draught of some mild elixir and was asleep on the divan with a book over her face. I myself was engrossed in chapter fourteen of 'Wuthering Heights.' and Mateil was feeling out a new composition on a Spanish guitar.

Suddenly,the diligent plucking ceased,but I hardly noted it,until Matiel was sitting on the floor at my feet,attempting to get my attention by peering beneath the book. He at last gave up, resting his chin on my knee. I lifted the book,staring down at him in glib anticipation.

"It seems we've been forbidden to speak to each other''He whispered. "Well,we are speaking now,what have you to say?'' ''I know that Danea has told you who I am..Or _what _I am. I suppose I can thank her cryptic manner and soft heart for not filling you in on the epithets typically applied.. Would you like to hear them Christine,You'd be amazed at how fast your dainty ears can get used to such things-'' ''Please Matiel, be silent! I would never want to hear you spoken of so low. I would not adapt to it in a million years'' ''Then you feel no strangeness toward me?'' ''I don't know.'' ''Then I will give you the benefit of doubt, and say, perhaps if you do feel so,that it is a general unease. How can I expect you,in your unabashed innocence of _all_ things, to comprehend the complexities of one tortured soul''

Flustered,I threw the book to the floor,and resumed my defensive position. ''I hate it when you talk this way Mateil. I abhor it! You are as bad as Danea, and I feel you are making fun of me. Do you forget you are at home and not on stage? May I assume you meant to say, I have had no love,no _lover_, hence, how could I possibly understand why you have chosen for yours another man.'' ''You are very blunt my darling!'' ''And I find my bluntness very refreshing after weeks and weeks of meandering allusions.'' ''point taken'' He said, kissing my hand and replacing the book in my lap.

''So is this true what you say,no love, no lover? No tender thing, too rough too rude, to prick you like a thorn? Let me be the one Christine..The things I could teach you cannot be found in any book. We will make good time writing our own history. What do you say little Angel of the night? His eyes were so very beautiful,looking up at me,I could almost believe it was an earnest proposal, instead of another one of his grand,absurd jests.'' ''I wouldn't throw away my honor for your cold kisses!'' I pinched his nose to negate the insult , but at that instant,our sleeping friend drew a deep and tremulous sigh,and our thoughts were again with her.

"what do you suppose is wrong ,Is she ailing?'' I asked,expecting him to answer me with more speculations.'' ''Yes, in a sense. Someone is showing her great unkindness,and it is wearing her down'' "What do you mean,who would be cruel to Danea,and why would she say nothing?'' "because She is ashamed. If you do not understand me come here, and I will show you.'' With utmost caution, he approached Danea, and bade me to follow.

Gingerly, Mateil lifted the white shawl from her arm,and I saw there on the pale skin,a hideous bruise. There was no mistaking its shape and size. It was the perfect imprint ,in ugly shades of blue and purple,of a clutching hand.

I covered my mouth to stifle a gasp. her arm looked so frail beneath the monstrous tattoo. It was unbearable to see such a thing, but Mateil was not through. On her neck were more,which she had tried to conceal with paint,and on the top of her bare foot,was another, blue black and crescent shaped, as if someone had stomped down with their shoe heel.

''This is only the beginning. She is a veritable pallet of bruises. He is quite the master of torture,but this is not the worst of it Christine'' He drew me away to the other side of the room,and stood paused in silent thought,leaning his head on his hand. I waited in horror, wondering what could be worse than this.

''How do I put this delicately? There is no way! so I will just say it. Christine, She is Carrying the bastards child.'' Of course, I was speechless. Felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me.''How do you know all these things?''

''It was last week,one of the few evenings we were not all together. Quite unexpectedly,she came banging on the door .Oh Christine,she was a sight! She was bleeding from her nose,and her ear,her clothes were torn,and her hair pulled out .I thought perhaps she had been attacked in the street,and that scenario would certainly be preferable to the truth.

She cleaned up,and put on one of these costumes that are all over the house, because her dress was ruined,then she sat and cried for an hour. When she could speak again she told me her story, what there is to tell. This man is a very wealthy German,who lives on the Rue De La Paix,when he is in Paris. He has an estate in Alscace, He has never taken Danea there. He must have a wife,and family there, that is what I think. He does not want the child,and has demanded that she ..ah well, never mind Christine. It is deplorable,I'm sure you understand that, from what you've seen. It is pointless for me to add details.

"What will we do,then, he will kill her!'' ''There is nothing we can do,except wait. Danea has assured me that he is leaving Paris. He is,washing his hands of her,as they say. If you confront her, it will only cause her further grief'' ''But the child-'' ''Hush'' he held his finger to his mouth.Danea was stirring now. She turned and the book fell to the floor with a thud which made me jump. I retrieved it ,curious to see what she had been reading. Was it Thomas Hardy's 'Tess' ? The Scarlett letter? Was it poetry. No. before she fell asleep, Danea had been reading a dictionary. My poor friend, Will I ever understand you?


	5. Christines journal winter 1875 76

DECEMBER 1875

It is only the first week of December,and already the city is covered in snow. How dreary those first few days of winter can be,everything asleep beneath the silent veil of white,as if it were a death shroud.

On the opening night of Voyage to the moon,I could hardly concentrate on my performance. I tried hard to put the awful situation out of my mind,but in rehearsal,we were always side by side,and I could see the artful tricks she had used to cover her wounds. But that evening I could have almost believed that I never had cause to worry to begin with.

Though she did not have the spotlight, Danea was in her element. She gave her little performance within the troupe her heart,as always. The relative anonymity seemed to inspire her. She _was _a dancer on the moon,no one watching but the stars.

After the show,she was more exhilarated than ever ,and yet she did not come and speak to us as usual. Neither did she seek me out later,and visit me in my room. I saw her once in the crowded lounge, dressed to go out and made a move to reach her. But I hesitated,and when I looked again,she was gone. It was almost a relief. It has been so hard these last few days,to act as if nothing were wrong,to keep laughing and smiling and not give myself away. Everyday it is more obvious that she is concealing something,and I am supposed to act as if I know nothing.

In the morning, after lessons when we share our breakfast ,she doesn't eat,but hovers absently over the food,as if she has forgotten its purpose. Her face,beneath the cosmetics,which she wears off stage now most all of the time,is an even shade of bilious green,and she suffers constantly with the vapors as if she were some frail mademoiselle from a penny dreadful.

I would have cause soon to regret my uncharitable thoughts,for that night was the last we would see of Danea for three days. She simply vanished,without a word or a note. We were frightened,but dare not tell the managers for fear she would loose her position.

The day following the premier ,we tried to think nothing of her disappearance,and bide our time. There was no performance that evening,instead,in preparations for the noel they were devoting the day to puppet shows and and entertainment for children. Danea's absence was hardly noted. On the second day when she did not show for rehearsal,we began making excuses for her,but the other dancers were questioned and confessed that she had not been to the dormitory that night. The third day we were sadly out of excuses,and went out of our way to avoid the alumni and their heated inquisitions.

But beyond all this,we were sick with worry,for Danea, though she is eccentric to the point of distraction at times,leaving us ever uncertain,and leading us gleefully astray for any mystical whim which piques her fancy,always puts these things aside,or casts them off if need be,for the sake of her art. This,is her meditation,what tethers mind and soul and all to life.

She had come to Paris alone,against her families wishes and without one sou from them,and with only another year of work or less,she would be a the premier ballerina,_the _ Prima Donna,Well this is what she believes,what she hopes. I could not think for one instant she would relinquish all of it without some dire reason.

Then,there _is_ the child. She must have considered already that this will ruin her,If he will not marry her,and at the very best, even if he was not cruel but loving,and took her in, It would be a year before she recovered fully,and how long after that till she attained again her present glory, if ever. I think these things. and all seems lost. My heart is so heavy, so sad for her. But then,there are dancers,actors,singers here who have children. I have seen them,after performances,or on idle days rushing into the waiting arms of mothers,fathers. even sisters whose care they have been left in,and the happiness in their faces,no fame could bring such joy. But then what have I to say about anything. I am not Danea, forsaken and ruined,and I am not a parent,and I have no father,and I have no mother. Nothing connects me to this world,be it a thing of joy,or a thing of pain.

How can I have pause to write these things!It seems some desperate,despicable history is attempting to articulate itself,and I can only hope it is for a better purpose than simply to state its grim existence. Perhaps it is a cautionary tale yet to be understood. I don't know. I can philosophize until the end of my days,but it will not dispel the misery we have visited on ourselves

On the third evening of Danea's vanishing, we went out to find her,when we could no longer sit on our hands hoping the situation would resolve itself. We could not tell the police,because they would go first to the Opera,and cause an uproar,and that is only,if we could get them to care at all.

Initially Mateil demanded that I stay behind,insisting that if she was to be found in peril,there was no sense in complicating things by having three of us to look out for. Whatever it was, he was equipped to handle it alone. He went on like that for some time. I knew what he meant,that he thought I would be in the way,I hearkened back with dawning indignation,to this strange game they had both been playing with me lately,and how Mateil had recently been more her friend than I had. His misplaced bravado infuriated me,I argued,I stamped my foot,and came very close to hurling insults at him I would never have been able to take back,and then I at last gave up,and let him go.

As soon as we parted ways,I went to my room and changed my clothes,but I did not put on my sleeping robe,or my evening gown,but my heavy winter clothes and stockings. I knew what would happen to my voice if I went out with my throat uncovered,but I had no real scarf,only a wrap Mama Valerius knitted for me last winter just before I came to Paris. It was nearly five feet long,and I could not move my head once it was wound around my neck. I am so afraid of being sick again. It was horribly awkward. The outfit,which almost encompassed my entire wardrobe,would not facilitate in the least,my attempt to be inconspicuous,unless its pale colors helped to camouflage me within the falling snow.

I was not prepared for how truly horrendous the weather was. The snow blew so hard I could scarcely see in front of me,and it was bitterly cold,so cold that my fingers were numb already,beneath my gloves by the time I made my way onto the avenue. I did not have to be concerned about Mateil seeing me,he was so far ahead by the time I began following,with blizzard between us,had he glanced to the empty streets behind,all he might have seen was an anomaly in the swirling white landscape .There were yet,a few hapless souls out,who had not quite managed to scurry to shelter,shapes in the mist that could have been anyone,or anything, but I knew Mateil by his height,and the old tartan coat he wore,with its bright hues of yellow and green,no gloom could hide.

He was going directly to the Rue De la Paix, not far at all,but It was so miserably cold and dark I might have been following him through the desolate wastes of the arctic. What is such a lovely walk in spring,was now causing me to loose my reason. There were howling voices in the wind,which cursed in my ear,and the snow took on strange shapes,and created disturbing mirages. At times,I saw Mateil in front of me,only to have him dissipate like a ghost.,I was so undone by these tricks of moon and cloud,I nearly turned and ran back. I had all the while,a disconcerting notion,that he would turn to confront me, and have no face at all,only a black hole,like the man in my dream long ago.

The snow that clung to him in drifts, gave too well the illusion of grave cerements. But I blessed myself,and drew in the icy air until my lungs ached,and the pain made me look sharp.All shades dissipated,and I saw only Mateil,a distant shadow on the blurred horizon.

He had known all along where she was. It was a private flat with a courtyard, maids quarters and the frozen remains of a lavish garden. It was quite obvious he had been here before,as he did not hesitate,or knock downstairs for a servant,but went immediately up a set of stairs at the back.

It was,to my advantage,a very ornate structure,doubling back on itself and decorated with several large pieces of statuary ,behind which,I could easily conceal my presence. I hid on the turn of the first rise,behind a marble urn festooned in a tangle of dead fern. I could see well enough from here. In the long windows of the second floor,candles burned,far too many it seemed for the hour,for I'm sure it was close to midnight by then.

Mateil did not knock,but instead,banged on the door with both of his fists,he pulled the bell until the sound resonated so shrilly through the night,I had to cover my ears. He called for Danea,and I thought he would rattle the door off its frame before someone answered. No one came for a good ten minutes. I wondered if they would find us here in the morning,frozen in place with the statues.

At last, the door was cracked open,though it was not Danea ,but some frightened little servant girl. The wind prevented me from hearing their conversation, but it was brief ,and animated. Mateil tried to push his way into the house,but the girl was stronger than she looked,and managed to push the door shut against him. He yelled something into the barred window,and rattled it again in that fearsome manner.

For a long while he stood,leaning on wall of the balcony with his head in his hands. Then he seemed to rally,and turned to go. I had moved in anticipation of his passing,and was now hiding behind an abutment at the foot of the stairs. I had not made up my mind to confront him there,or to wait. He had just reached the landing where I had been,when the the frozen darkness was shattered by the most agonized screams.

It was like a vision from a nightmare,but one which will never fade as long as I am alive. I heard some commotion on the balcony,and looked up,to see,standing on the stairs,halfway between Mateil and the landing,what had been my beautiful friend.

Her poor face was chalk white,and her eyes,were deep hollows. Her great masses of dark hair hung in matted tangles about her shoulders like a black shroud. She was barefoot,and wearing only a white satin shift,or what had been a white shift,for I could just see,in moonlight,and the blaze from the open door that it was dark with blood. The next happened so fast, if I did not have Mateil as a witness,I would forever be questioning the accuracy of my memory.

She appeared temporarily confused by the darkness,by the snow flying all around her,Then she saw Mateil,and she cried out in the strangest way,reaching out for him while she tried to find her footing down the steps. Before he could get his bearings and take more than three steps toward her,an enormous shadow leapt up behind her and had its arm across her neck. The other held a bowie knife to her side. It was easier to believe this was some manner of gargoyle come to life,rather than a man,I cannot even articulate the horror of that moment,and how even so,it did not seem real. The monster began booming out some gibberish ''sie ist die dirne des teufels!''Repeating it again and again. He was pulling her back with that massive arm across her neck,and she could not even scream. Then I saw the flash of the knife as he lifted it. I ran forward without thinking,and promptly slipped on the ice, in that instant,Mateil pulled a pistol from his coat, raised it and shot.

He perhaps,only meant to fire a warning ,but the ball hit the man in the shoulder,knocking him backwards,and the release of his prisoner was spontaneous. She reacted as one under a heavy sedation,teetering stuporously as if she was not even fully aware of her sudden liberation.,reaching blindly for the rail,Her bare,frozen foot slid on the wet step and she pitched forward,tumbling twenty feet to the landing.

The only one left standing was Mateil,who remained in a daze with the gun still dangling from his hand. Danea's attacker stumbled back into the house. But it seemed useless now to go after him.

She lay twisted at the base of the stairs,as still as death. white flakes of snow in her hair like stars. Mateil was the first to reach her. He knelt and picked her up very tenderly,mindful of her grievous injuries,but she did not respond. She lay in his arms like a broken doll. I felt then that all was lost. I could not move,or speak,and and I looked up at Mateil as if he could somehow wake us from this spell,this dream of death and grief. We simply stared at one another, across the dark,for who knows what length of time,before I found my voice.''Just tell me'' I cried,and the words resonated on the wind with such hideous portent.''if she Is dead' Of course,he did not answer. What was there to say? I saw his shadow lean low and meet with hers,only for a moment,and then he raised himself again abruptly. ''No Christine,she is alive. She has only had the breath knocked out of her''

By this time,there were shouts in the street below,footsteps,and lights approaching. I knew instinctively we were doomed,but then I hadn't the heart to ponder the rest of our lives,we were all still alive,and I had no quarrel with God.

It has been nearly two weeks now since the night in the Rue De La Paix, and the consequences have been swift,and wholly unexpected.

Danea remained unconscious for two days. Her lover,whose name I learned only then,was Thomas managed to keep his freedom for two days,until Danea awoke, blessedly in possession of all her facilities,and was able to tell the inspectors what had transpired in the house. He was then promptly arrested .oddly enough not for the injuries he inflicted ,as these could not be proven, even with witnesses,to be anything more than a horrible accident, but for his association and employment of a certain unscrupulous doctor. Subsequently,the doctor himself was arrested for what he had done to Danea.

Mateil himself sat in jail for that time,until Danea corroborated his story. Even though her senses had been assaulted by enough laudanum to put an army down,her memory was unscathed. She however,was not. Her leg had been broken in the fall,and the doctor said she would not walk again without a crutch. I think she knew,even in her long sleep what this meant,for she never has said a word on the subject,though looking at the bound mess that was her livelihood,her perfection,silent tears well up in her eyes,and she cannot speak of anything for hours on end.

Knowing something of the deplorable condition we discovered her in,and the circumstances,I had another question for the doctors. Besides being tossed down the stairs,she had been butchered internally,and developed septicemia. The pain and fever she awoke to were so ravaging, I thought it better if she had never awoke at all. But under the excellent care of the hospital,and because she strong,she came through. I was too embarrassed to ask when it came to it,so I blurted it out with my eyes shut,like the stupid child that I am.''I suppose she will never have any more children,is it true?'' The old doctor,somewhat of a frightening eccentric himself,gave me the queerest look,it made me want to put my hat over my face and sneak out of there,forever.

''My young lady,you would do well to get your lovely head out of that current trash you call literature,the _romance. _For mercies sake you children must have your fill of the worlds wickedness even if by fortune,it does not come by you. This is the the nineteenth century ,not the dark ages.Your friend shall have two dozen brats if it pleases her vanity. God does depend on the sanguine to overpopulate his starving cities.

After holding my own through the events of the last week,this was too much. I trembled like a sick cat,and tears spilled from my burning eyes.''You are not very nice at all Monsieur,how is that you are entrusted with the care of the sick? And I do not read romances at all,I am not stupid country fool.'' ''Sit down my dear,that will do'' His tone was much kinder now,but still,I did not trust him,and sat on the edge of the chair ready to bolt if need be.'

'I did not mean to frighten you,but I am an old man,and I have seen much too much of this world,and found the bulk of it no more than a cruel joke. A man,for all his ignorance and self importance will have his wife bear three or four,mouths that can scarce be fed,and throw the fifth out simply because he is lame,or worse,ugly. The streets,and the infirmaries are full of these You are so young and full of hope and ideals. How could begin to believe in the existence of such atrocities. You are probably the jewel of your parents eye.''I have no parents Monsieur. No one at all. The opera is my home.'' He smiled,rather wistfully.'' Well you see how quickly we misjudge.. even myself,and I should know better.''

I was so happy to see Mateil,I did not keep myself in check .Perhaps I should not have been so exuberant, but For three days I had kept a dry eye,feeling that if I allowed myself the luxury of any emotion,I would loose my mind completely,and now Danea was safe,and he was free.

So final,so terrible it had seemed. And when it was over, I was left alone on the dark street . A shopkeeper,up late, had taken Danea to the infirmary in his little dray .She looked so strange laid there among his pots and ropes like the fallen statues in Pere Lachaise. Mateil was put in a wagon,with chains on his hands. There are scarce words to describe the bitter helpless ache accompanying these things,to see one whose free ways you have so admired,one who is so dear,thus confined,strangely,all at once Love seems defined by those restraints. Now,in the daylight,with the sun sparkling on the brilliant white landscape,it felt like a hundred years behind us

I met him walking from the jail, still in his same clothes,unshaven and pale, looking like a ghost of himself,and I threw my arms around him without any formalities. He felt hollow and heavy at the same time. He said nothing at first, just sighed, resting his chin on the top of my head. His arms around me were as heavy as iron. Then he spoke,rather absently ''Christine,you are rare beam of sunlight,and how welcome,after that dank dungeon,you will never know...and Danea, how has she fared,I have had no news except that she was conscious?'' ''our friend is mending beautifully.'' I do not know what provoked me into answering this way,as she was still in the grip of fever,and virulent pain.''She almost seems as good as her old self. But for today I have not strayed ten feet from her side'' ''How could she be the same,after what the monster has done?'' ''Abruptly,he held me out at arms length,and began searching my face with a look that made me very uneasy.'' Something else has happened, hasn't it? Tell me the truth,the butchers work is not the worst of it,is it?'' I opened my mouth to speak,but the words would hardly come out,so fearsome was that expression in his eyes.''No it is not all. Her leg was broken in the fall. The doctors do not know how she will walk again-''Suddenly,he threw himself down on the cold earth,and with his head between his knees,howled,and sobbed like madman.

I was taken aback by his severe reaction. They were not the tears of sorrowful relief one would have expected,but complete and utter anguish. I sat down next to him on the curb,and I was crying as well. I put my arm,and cloak over him,and we stayed that way for a long time,weeping,with our heads bent together and our boots sunk deep in the frozen mud.

He believes himself to be at fault for the accident. I cannot make him see how much worse,how final it might have gone had never been there .He will not be persuaded.''If I had not been there,I would not have fired the pistol,and she would not have fallen,and that is all. What life have I saved for her if she can no longer dance?I know she would prefer death''.""Then you do not know Danea at all''I said.''It is her vitality which feeds her art,not the other way. She would be shocked to hear you say such things.'' I said these things with great conviction,but in my heart,I could not reconcile them.

His guilt was such,that he would not visit her in the infirmary, because he could not bear to be faced with the truth. He could think of nothing adequate to say to her, so he thought it best to say nothing at all, while she inquired over him incessantly. I made up the best,and most all encompassing excuse that I could.''He is afraid of hospitals.'' ''Imagine that ''she laughed, a strange look on her face''I hate them as well,yet here I am,chained to this bed..''

Our silence grows uncomfortable, but I sit with her until it is dark,and the nurse comes and

lights her lamp,and puts her out with another dose of laudanum. She never quite goes to sleep,expeditiously and peacefully as she used to,like a child. She drifts away,reluctantly,as if consciousness is a far shore she does not want to lose sight of. She says the strangest things to me during these times. Once,after I was sure she had fallen asleep, and I had just made my first cautious effort at departing, she suddenly roused and turned to me in a fever,clutching my arm as if I would get away before she could form her thoughts. Her eyes were so bright! Seeming to gather and concentrate light from every spare source in the room,and giving her a look of divinity, so intense it frightened me.

''Christine'' She was reverent ''All those nights we stayed together in your room at the

Opera.,and the weeks just before all those strange dreams,do you remember?'' "of course,it was not such a long time ago Danea..Your clock is off I'm afraid.'' ''Yes. I suppose,with nothing to do anymore but lie here and watch the shadows move on the walls, time does get away .But My dreams Christine! _Those _ dreams which plagued me in the days before the..before my..before _this._

Two nights before,I heard a voice in one of these dreams which warned me not to go,but I ignored it Christine,because it was not the first time it had spoken to me,but it was the first time it had ever spoke on my behalf. Perhaps this is why I treated it so lightly.. I had begun to regard it as more of a nuisance,This voice... Because ,It was the most beautiful voice I have ever heard,It was an angels voice and a demons voice all at once,like nothing on earth,yet it regaled nothing but nonsense.And the nonsense,Christine,was all concerning you! I wanted the voice to talk to me,to speak _my _name but over and over,it would come,and give me the most cryptic little messages commanding in one occult way or another that they be relayed to you. I tried for awhile,but I think I was envious,and eventually kept it to myself .

It was the night before we were lost in the cellars,when we heard that terrible weeping. The voice spoke more eloquently than ever ..It urged me to watch over you..to not let you faulter.. to wait..Wait for what? I asked it.. A great love,a love so grand,so high its boundaries could not be reached with mere words..I felt this more than heard it,like an unbearable swelling,and then ebbing of my heart..but I only answered it with indifference.. and then, I was in your room,and that mirror moved,and frightened me,but it wasn't just that alone. Very clearly,I heard,as if it were in the room with us,the voice say,''Tell her tomorrow,she will be free,I will go tomorrow'' That unearthly voice! And I wondered that you did not here it as well.. Then I was convinced I was losing my mind..And since I have heard it only that once,and again I did not listen..Oh Christine,what was it? A guardian, a familiar,a demon,My imagination? The price I pay for courting the dark arts as I have?"

For a long while after she had finished,sinking back into a troubled reverie,I could not speak,my throat felt paralyzed,but my thoughts were racing. I felt they would overrun me. I recalled with aching clarity my own vivid dreams,and the music that haunted my dark room in those long days of my illness, ah..and the visitor,the healer that came in my strange waking dream,the cool hand which had snatched me from the colder grip of death. I had so stoically,successfully managed to discredit them all,That they hardly mattered anymore, fading fast in the wake of other cares. But Danea's speech brought them back with sharp poignancy.. Those days,those nights ,when the magic forest,and the endless sky of my room had been everything to me, had been a living breathing thing.

''Danea" I finally managed to find my voice..''I can't say why,but I believe you..I mean,they are real,these things,but you are wrong to think you are being punished for reading palms and tea leaves,or whatever it is you do.'' She turned to me again,and the laudanum was working in her,she seemed dreamy,at a truce with herself.''Then tell me what it is Christine..What seems like a lover,a prophet,a cipher ,an omen all at once..tell me..'' ''It is none Danea, none of those things,it is a friend'' She was satisfied with this answer,though I suspected,not completely content,for neither was I ,but it seemed the best thing for both of us right then.

The consequences of our debacle,were as I suggested before,rather unexpected. Mateil has resigned his position at the opera,and has made his new home the Musee' du Sappho. He was not asked to leave though,and strangely,not even interrogated for his part in the tragedy,In fact,Our managers were rather inclined to begging and bribing him to stay,and this,not from his own mouth,but from reliable sources more privy to the inner workings of the hierarchy.

It has been the same with myself,no questions,at least none of any substance. I have gloriously retained my position as glorified chorus girl,but for Danea's mournful absence,it's as if nothing has happened.

With the noel only a week away now,there are plenty of festivities at the opera,and Matiel is always there. Maybe he is sorry he left. I don't know,but I see him just as much as I ever did. He never talks of the accident,but lately he has been more at ease than I have ever seen him,very at peace. Almost happy I dare say. Perhaps this is why,as it has worked in a measure,to relieve his guilt;He has made arrangements for Danea to move into his little apartment with him, until she is fully recovered. I visited him there several days ago,and witnessed an amazing transformation. All of the spiders were evicted,replaced by flowers and and urns and various sundries. There were a few pieces of new furniture,in the Egyptian style which Danea is so fond of,and rumpled papers,worn books,and old costumes were replaced by all of Danea's belongings from the Opera,which in this accommodating space looked pitifully sparse and humble. I think,in the end,the two who were most wronged will fare better than anyone. They are so much alike, Mateil and Danea,this new arrangement could only be beneficial. The perfect environment for healing broken spirits.

Though I am relieved for my friends,that pervading loneliness has settled on me once again. The terrible sense of emptiness and and futility when I am closed in my room,gazing up at the silent sky. I ask questions of it,it does not answer. I listen for that haunting music so intently that my head begins to buzz with its own eerie,discordant melodies,like an orchestra tuning itself out in space,without the players,just lost sound,floating shapelessly.

In February, Danea will be going home for a short while. She has attained a temporary peace of sorts with her family,and longs to see her sister. Mateil suggested that I might occupy her space while she is gone,and forsake my lodgings at the opera,with the idea that all three of us might stay together eventually. He confessed later that he has doubts she will return,as she has said there is nothing for her here if she cannot dance.

I see no compelling reason why this could not be. Yet whenever I approach the idea,from any angle,I am filled with the most awesome sense of dread and foreboding,as if something invisible chains me here hopelessly ,and even if I should free myself,it would only be at a grievous cost. So I have refused his offer. What will I ever do? How am I bound to something I can neither see or hear, feel or touch? And how do I free myself from it? And Perhaps,in my soul,I would never choose to be released. How is it connected with those things Danea spoke of?

Danea was released from the infirmary just a day before our holiday,and Mateil was there at last, to bring her to her new home. It was snowing again, but lovely,and we chose to go on foot,wheeling Danea in her invalids chair,instead of shutting ourselves up in a chaise. We must have looked odd to the few observers who were out at that early hour,two unidentifiable bundles of cloak and hat and scarf maneuvering an ungainly contraption through the frozen streets,and its cargo,a pale and subdued,somewhat thinner Danea. I had helped her to fix her hair for the journey back into the world,but had not done a very professional job,and before we were halfway there,the wind had worked it all loose again,so its dark clouds blew all around her ghostly face.It reminded me of the summer nights riding through the Bois Bologne on Matiel's deadly boneshakers,Except we were breathless now from cold,not laughter.

Danea takes everything in with a quite studious wonder I have never seen in her before.She watches the falling snow,and it seems as if she is hardly believing it. Not able to comprehend how or when the world became this white be diamonded landscape,like a princess whose life was an eternal spring,awakening one morning to see winter for the first time.

She was so overwhelmed upon entering the apartment,she burst into tears,wheeling about,touching all of her possessions,as if they were all new to her as well. They are so happy, those

two,I feel an awful stab of jealousy knowing I must go back to the opera,alone,and face my silent room,and the bland cold faces of all the other dancers and actors. But we at least spend the holiday together,three days where we are forbidden to feel sorry for ourselves,or ruminate over past wrongs.

Last night,after we had all long retired,a strange noise awoke me. I crept around the corner from where my little cot is,and saw Danea had gotten up,and was straining from her chair to reach a book on a high shelf. The noise was things falling on her. Somehow I thought it better to leave her be,I knew she wanted to be alone. The book she at last cajoled from its niche was her old friend the dictionary. Unable to squash my curiosity, I continued to watch while she flipped aimlessly through the pages,and then began dashing tears from her eyes,as if it there were a tragic romance contained therein.

I took a cautious step backward,returning to my bed,and a loose board in the floor screeched and gave me away. Danea looked up,startled,and then seeing me seemed annoyed.''Christine,you are always sneaking around corners like a scared little cat. Don't stay there,come and sit with me..I feel like such a ghost.'' I came in and threw myself into a deep soft chair across from her. It was swallowing me,folding its velvet arms over me. I sighed,tried to sit upright.''I too feel like a ghost Danea..I think I _will_ be one when I return to the opera'' ''Then don't go..it would be really,something else,and a little scandalous for us make a trio here.. Perhaps we could become a novelty act, like in a circus.'' ''Ah,the worrisome thing is,that you are _not _ being facetious.''

The image of us as a circus act, rose too potently in my imagination,I tried to erase it by changing the subject. I asked Danea why,with all the books surrounding us,was she always reading a dictionary.''I don't know really.. My father once told me, I was..dim, and if I chose the life of a dancer I would prove it. This hurt more than I would like to admit.. and one day, I was brooding over it,and needed a distraction. I picked up the first thing near me,which was a dictionary. After an hour our so of staring at definitions and prefixes and suffixes and columns and columns of little black words,I found I felt much better,and my mind was not so dull after all. So in conclusion,whenever I am low, very low,I turn to this tome.. perhaps someday I'll be a genius.'' ''why not just read an ordinary book?'' ''Much too constraining,how could I concentrate? Besides,this, when you think of it,must contain every poem and story ever written in the world,and everyone ever to be written. I like to think of that,and while I do,I am content enough.''

We had a beautiful noel,decorating the flat with mistletoe and ribbons,and buying each other silly gifts. We put our shoes out for saint nick like children. I thought they looked very funny lined up under the window, waiting empty. In the morning I was the first one awake,and I had the queerest feeling that there would be something mysterious and grand inside my shoe. It made me uneasy,like those days at the opera when I never knew what I would find in my room or on my vanity. It was frightening,yet thrilling,and though I was truly relieved when the little presents stopped appearing,In my heart I felt a decided pang of sadness and disappointment. My shoe was full of wonderful things,things I understood,simple things,baubles and confections and the like,but no jewelry,no exotic sundries. I was glad. Such a presence,returning would have only cast a shadow over this happy time,which is short lived enough as it is.

**JANUARY 1876**

The new year has come,and everything is the same for me. Danea has settled nicely into her new home,and except for her leg,she seems almost as good as new,but then,she hides so much. I sense she is very afraid of something,or someone still. I continue to struggle along with my singing. I have a teacher,but he is terrible and I'm sure he thinks I am an idiot. I received a letter from Mama Valerius,and the date has been set for me to go home for two weeks. I don't know if I will come back. Perhaps I will just marry,and stay in Perros for the rest of my life,sewing and cooking,watching the sea. Last night, alone I was dreaming up the populace of my past, just to have some company and someone very unexpected entered the picture.A boy I haven't thought about since before my father died. He was once a regular visitor at Perros,spending days with my father and I at the seaside..but then, he went into the military..I think he had an older brother..I did not like him one whit..but I can't recall why. The boy was sweet though.. oh what was his name!..He was fair..he reminded me of a prince.. very noble. Why can't I remember.. He rescued my scarf from the sea...

What a confusing world. I am now scheduled to visit Perros three weeks earlier than planned. At first I was more than willing,and I will tell why presently.. It was my fault.. and now Mama Valerius does not want me to return to Paris at all, and I think now,this cannot be..but it was all my doing!

I was coming back to the opera from Mateils, foolishly late ,a week ago. I was very tired and without an escort,and my senses I thought,were playing tricks on me. It was too late when I realized I had been reading them correctly. I was being followed through the dark streets by someone,but by the time I had the sense to run,it was too late,they were already upon me. They knocked me to the ground,and I never saw them,as I fell on my face and could not move,but I could smell and hear them well enough.

I was terrified beyond words. I could not even scream,the man breathed into my face,and it was like a wind from the grave. I managed to tell him I had four sous in my purse,but he said he did not want my money,not just yet. Oh the horrors that clashed through my head,and I prayed he would just break my neck first. I didn't care. I felt the warmth and wetness of my own blood pooling in my eye and down my cheek. Above my own terror, I was sorry for Mama Valerius,that they would have to tell her how I was found in the streets of Paris. I felt his slimy hand on my neck,and his weight on my back,pushing the air out of me,each time I tried to take a breath I found my chest constricted. Then I felt his same filthy hand on my leg,above my stocking,and somehow,with my last breath,I was able to scream,although I knew it was feeble,and no one would hear me. I screamed until I saw little white stars dancing in front of my eyes.

Then the miraculous happened. Just as quickly as it had begun,it was over. There was a strange sound behind us, the whoosh of some thing approaching at a great speed,and then the mans weight was gone,he was gone,as if he had just flown away,and I found myself crawling down the wet street,gasping in the fresh air. My head was throbbing,and I could not see for the blood in my eye. In a moment, I heard the most horrible screams coming from a distance, like some beast being stabbed to death, and I was sufficiently inspired to work up enough strength to get on my feet and run. My legs were shaking terribly,and everything was spinning around me. At last just too quick,I could not retain my composure,and only managed to get a few yards away before collapsing,everything disappearing in a black cloud,rising swiftly from the ground and turning the world,with me on it,on its head.

I had a long nightmare then. It seemed to go on for days. I was a little child again,and with my father. We were in the midst of the rush and whirl of Paris,and everyone seemed like giants,but I was not afraid. Then suddenly it was gone. We were alone,walking through a desolate darkness,and over my shoulder,I could see the lights of Paris, far away like stars, and becoming ever more distant. It made me feel achingly lonesome,e ven though my father was there. We walked until the sun rose, it was not a true sunrise, but strange. The day, at full bloom,was no more than a cold twilight ,with the sun hanging pendulous and heavy on the horizon. Somehow,we found our way into a horrendous forest,where all the trees were black, and the ground shifting and treacherous. The low sun was watching us through these trees like an awful menacing eye, following us. I kept talking to Papa,but he would not answer,and I was so frightened,I felt myself shivering uncontrollably. Then we were running,running for our lives,and I could hear something thundering behind us,closing in,I could almost feel its breath. I tried to scream but my throat was frozen,and then in a blur I saw something,ahead of us,a light,and something in it,not frightening,a beacon,or..I don't know.. I woke up,still with that frozen scream in my lungs.

I opened my eyes to find myself in the managers office,the gruesome opulence of burgundy velvet and black oak and leather swirling dizzily around me .I had a blanket about me,and my head and arm had been bandaged. I was not badly injured,somehow I had been spared,but how? ITried to sit up,and was instantly sick. The first thing I saw was Monsieur Debienne, and he did not look sympathetic, but angry. This was too much. I began to cry, asking how I came to be here,and not my own room. Our good managers listened stoically to my wailing,then, without a word, La Sorrelli appeared and escorted me to my room. I noticed that a bolt had been installed on the outside,and I soon found myself locked in. At first I was too weary to make much of it,but when Monsieur Poligny came the morning to bring me my breakfast tray,I demanded an explanation.''My dear,we have taken the liberty of writing your guardian,and they have written back,with your travel arrangements,you are to leave for Perros next week,and until then,we have been instructed to keep you safe,under lock and key,since you haven't the wit to keep yourself out of harms way.'' He left briskly then,without so much as a good day. I sat and thought,while I chewed on my toast,very long about what he had said. The more times I repeated it to myself,the less sense it made.

Mama Valerius and I had written very little to one another in the past three months,and she never,in any of her notes gave any indication of concern,or suspicion. Our correspondences were pleasant and rather bland,and how would she have discovered before even a day had passed,that I had been attacked. I ruminated over these inconsistencies,but did not obsess, for in truth,I was glad to be going home earlier. I wanted the lulling peace of the sea for a while, perhaps forever, to draw my troubled thoughts away

I stayed a prisoner in my room for three nights,but hardly noticed,busy packing my things and looking forward more eagerly with every passing hour,to getting on the train,to seeing the little house again where father and I had spent so many happy years.But then,something extraordinary happened,as it always seems to at critical times,to throw me into a state of desperate confusion again.

It was a simple thing really,no less mundane than striking up a conversation with a stranger,or learning a new song..and yet,what was unusual about it,I can't articulate,I only know,I am changed somehow.

Last night,my last night before the trip,there was ball of sorts being held at the opera,another one of the masquerades our managers are so enamored with. I was at last allowed my liberty,so that I could find a costume. I was glad for the theme,so I would not have to attend the dance with the awful purple bruise showing on my forehead,but I really did not have my heart in it. I found some items among our stage costumes,left from a midsummer nights dream,wings,and strange headdresses,and managed to make myself into a very odd,but I will admit,fetching butterfly.

Amidst the first wave of guests,I saw Mateil and Danea,and too my great surprise,the latter was resplendent as proserpine,and free of her medieval chair, maneuvering on a cleverly concealed crutch. I thought Matiel looked amusingly ridiculous as a peacock. They only came for a brief interlude,and to wish me well on my trip. But Mateil, in earnest, pleaded with me once more to forego my trip,at least until Danea returned from hers,and stay with him. When I again refused, he seemed crushed,and I felt like I had just drowned someone.

For the first hour of the evening,I alternated despondently from watching brilliant Danea charm the gentleman into a gingerly,dance or two,even crippled so,she was light on her feet,to following My dear,dejected Mateil, his feathers left to sweep the ground. Occasionally he would catch me watching,and give me a hopeful gaze. To no avail. Before I knew it,the enchanted hour was over,and they were bravely wishing me goodbye. Mateil had rallied I suppose. He saluted me with raised plumage,and departed with his usual aplomb and good humor.

Even so,I could not assuage my guilt,my unease. I determined somehow to make it up to him,whether I returned or not,but this was poor compensation.

I felt lost. I drifted about with my own wings dragging. I was in a wilderness of strangers now. The music droned on,but seemed tuneless to my ears,not just tuneless but gratingly discordant. I fancied I was invisible, and perhaps this was a fitting end to my life in Paris.

It was very late into the evening,when the lamps had burned low in the ballroom,and there was more smoke than light in the air.A dispirited rendition of Coppelias waltz was just winding through its last notes,and I had said my goodbyes to the grand spectacle,and was drifting off toward my room,to the same languid,dull pace as the music. I was near the back of the crowd,when at once,Coppelia squelched to clanging halt,and after a breathless intermission,the orchestra suddenly came to life again to Sainte Saens. The tune was out of place, but magnificent. Danse macabre. I had only heard it once,but recognized immediately. The first plinking,tiptoeing notes,like rain,and then the devils violin,and the angels flutes,followed by the great sweep of sound carrying one up and up.. but I get ahead of myself. Some one had been watching me through the evening. I knew it instinctively. I never saw them,but all night I felt them with me,following my every move. Now a figure came swiftly, gracefully, oh I cant describe such grace articulately , a panther in the jungle,a bird of prey? He came out of the shadows just as the dancers took their first turns across the floor,a towering man in the guise of a glittering lion. His entire face was covered.. but his eyes,his eyes! Lions eyes,strange golden eyes! And they held me so,I could not look away.

He bowed,and his elegant approach was only a ghost of things to come. He did not speak,nor ask for the dance,he simply held out his arms,and I think I was enchanted, hypnotized.Though he was utterly graceful, perhaps even light,he was astonishingly powerful. My senses all, felt heightened preternaturally,all in tune with this person,yet at some point,I would swear they left me completely.

Never had I danced this way,without thought,only unearthly abandon. I felt my entire being alive within his hands,I could not feel my feet beneath me,or the ground,yet my steps were sure perfection,as if I had been born to move with mad grace,to flow and rush like water. The music played under the spell of some insane conductor,at once bombastic,then passionate,then playful. Faster and faster it went,unrelenting,and so did we. I had no thought that it would end. I was not tired but exhilarated,yet in the very back of my consciousness,a small flame flickered, of fear, of wonder. I must question things always,and to death. I felt something very sweet and unknown.. overwhelming.. Desire, for something, I knew not what. I wanted suddenly,desperately to see who he was,to touch his face,to hear him speak.

Almost as if on cue from my silent thoughts,the music ended,and I felt the earth again,unpleasantly solid beneath me. The magicians arms released me,and before I could protest, he had bowed his adieu,and was swallowed by the darkness. I followed, still spellbound,along the path where he had turned into smoke and shadow,still fancying I could see his magnificent form in the crowd,but he was gone completely,as quickly as he had appeared.

All night I could not sleep,I felt fevered,but not ill,a rush in my head. I could still feel his hands,on me,still feel the madness of that devils waltz in my blood and my bones. I threw my costume off,and did not bother to dress for bed,I felt like a heathen. ecstatic.I can't leave! Who was he..I must know!..ah but I have no choice! That dance will haunt my dreams for eternity.

I fell asleep at last just before dawn,a deep slumber without dreams.Only...only once again, so sweet and aching,I heard the music in the walls, Chopins nocturne,a melancholy farewell. Who in the night, mourns me? Goodbye then,sweet spirit of music do not forget me .


End file.
